Never thought there would be an English word for the mate fruit, used as
a cup to contain the cut little pieces of yerba mate leaves, I'm
learning of our local habits, too :-).
Yes, my Oxford dictionary says gourd is a noun for a type of large
fruit, not normally eaten, with hard skin and soft flesh. Gourds are
often dried and used as containers. Syn.: calabash.
Colloquially, mate is an ubiquitous name for the container, the drink
itself, the fruit when fresh, and can be transformed into a verb ->
tomar mate = matear, and into a joke too: "tomá mate !" = "surprised,
aren't you !?".
Why buy an useless old gourd ? - better a new one, even if not worked in
silver, unless you want to display it behind glass ... mates are to be
taken to the seashore, with a Stanley bottle of almost boiling water to
drink slowly while taking some OM photograph ... ;^)
Fernando.
Mike wrote:
> Bombilla (pronounced: beau-m-bee-dsha) given to me by a friend in
> Mendoza. The gourd has long ago disintegrated. The local antique store
> where my wife works just acquired a collection of fine old gourds worked
> in silver. I should get one to go with the bombilla however they
> couldn't be used for yerba maté any more. I can't remember the name for
> the gourd in spanish. Mate perhaps? Help me here Fernando.
>
> Mike
> <http://www.interisland.net/watershed/mike/BOMBILLA.JPG>
>
--
Dr. Fernando González Gentile M.D.
Av.L.P.Ponce 1526B - 11600 Montevideo, Uruguay.
Phone: +598 2 7084858
Fax: +598 2 7087396
<fgnzalez@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
--
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