{"id":13578,"date":"2013-06-25T18:55:58","date_gmt":"2013-06-25T23:55:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/?p=13578"},"modified":"2021-10-28T10:59:13","modified_gmt":"2021-10-28T15:59:13","slug":"drung","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/drung\/","title":{"rendered":"What the Drung?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

While we’re speaking of street suffixes — we were just speaking<\/a> of street suffixes, weren’t we — and after the stravenue<\/a> encounter, 12MC stumbled upon a suffix of even more weirdness: Drung. Imagine, living not on a street, an avenue, a boulevard, a drive or even a terrace, rather a drung.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drung used in this manner is extremely rare and applies to only one place I could find, to Newfoundland. I’ve encountered the unique words that Newfoundlanders brought to English previously, for example the use of “tickle<\/a>” to describe a narrow saltwater straight or a settlement abutting one. The same source that defined tickle, the ever-helpful Dictionary of Newfoundland English<\/a>, also solved the mystery of drung. It was a “narrow lane or passage between houses, fenced gardens, etc.<\/em>” It derived from the Old English “thrang,” which referred to a throng or a crowd. Variations of the term included drang and drong. So I guess that would make a drung the tickle of roads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I found very few instances of drung used as a street suffix, making it perhaps even more rare than stravenue. However, I discovered two very small clusters. I imagine there are probably additional examples out there and likely I would have found them with access to a database of Canadian street names. Drung was too close to Drunk or Drug, which seemed to confuse the search engines. No, I really did mean drung<\/em>. They thought they knew better though, like I was drung [sic.] or something and too impaired to type the word correctly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Carbonear<\/h2>\n\n\n\n