The French word \"col\" (pass)<\/strong> comes from the Latin collum, meaning neck. The word col is attested in French around the 11th century, but it was not used in its geographical sense until the 17th century, replacing the Old French port. However, it was used from the 15th and 16th centuries in meanings such as the neck of a bladder, then the neck of a vase.<\/p>\n Port<\/strong> comes from an Indo-European root per- which in Latin gave portus , attested from the 10th century in Old French (92 examples from the Pyrenees in the Chauvot).<\/p>\n Not<\/strong> comes from the Latin pandere, passus, and is used from the 11th century in the sense of passage, d\u00e9fil\u00e9 (passeur in the 12th century). Littr\u00e9 (on 28 meanings of pas) gives the meaning of \u00abnarrow and difficult passage in a mountain\u00bb with a quotation from Vaugelas for the 13th meaning (11th meaning: passage, 12th: pertuis, 15th: seuil). According to the Dictionnaire historique de la langue fran\u00e7aise, as early as 1160-1174, pas was used to designate a difficult passage often qualified by the old adjective mal (1176-1181), the origin of today's malpas; replaced (13th century) by mauvais, hence today's mauvais pas and maupas; it was later used to designate a strait (1530) or a defile (1559), both of which are now obsolete, except in toponymy (e.g. pas de Calais, pas de Suse).<\/p>\n Drop<\/strong> comes from the Latin bassus which gave bassiare (lat.vulg.) then baisser (French in the 11th century) and finally baisse (in the 16th century). Littr\u00e9 gives the 3rd meaning (out of 4) as \u00abcollapsed ground\u00bb, but without any reference to the mountain. Since when has it been used to designate a pass? They are mainly found in the Alpes Maritimes (215 examples in the Chauvot)!<\/p>\n Breach<\/strong> attested in French in 1119, is said to come from High German brecha from Frankish breka (218 examples in Chauvot).<\/p>\n Parade<\/strong> (1643) is derived from the Latin filum , giving filare in Low Latin (circa 1160), meaning an enclosed passage (where you can only pass in single file).<\/p>\n Strait<\/strong> is derived, first in the form destreit (1080) from the Latin districtus . The word, initially an adjective, was used to describe a narrow passage (les destreiz passages). It retained this meaning until the 17th century, when it took on its modern meaning of a narrow inlet.<\/p>\n Passage<\/strong> (1080) is derived from the verb passer (1050) from the late Latin passare derived from the Latin passus. It originally designated a mountain pass, a port; there are still many examples of this (121 citations in the Chauvot).<\/p>\n In fact, most of our terms, which are synonymous with col (1), owe nothing to French. They are derived from the many dialects and patois of our three great Romance domains (O\u00efl, oc and Franco-Proven\u00e7al) and, of course, also from some of our regional languages (e.g. Alsatian, Basque, Breton, Catalan, Corsican, etc.).<\/p>\n (1) one or two hundred, depending on whether you refer to the glossary compiled from the \u00abChauvot\u00bb or the one I obtained from external sources (see my article \u00abHow do you call a pass in France?\u00bb RVA no. 6).<\/p>\n Here are some examples of definitions obtained by consulting standard dictionaries:<\/p>\n None of these definitions seems really satisfactory to a pass hunter who has encountered so many different situations. The last one, the shortest and simplest, seems to me to be the least bad.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Let's take a look at what the geography dictionaries have to say.<\/p>\n First search (Hatier geographical dictionary): \u00abWhen a ridge line descends and then rises again, it forms a pass\u00bb. That's good!<\/p>\n Second search (dictionnaire critique de la Documentation Fran\u00e7aise: les mots de la g\u00e9ographie): \u00abdepressed point between two summits, saddle on a ridge, facilitating passage\u00bb. In the same dictionary, ensellement is defined as \u00aba fairly wide hollow in the profile of a ridge, of an elongated relief, like the back of a horse\u00bb.<\/p>\n Pas (after col, the most widely used term: 905 examples in the Chauvot); passage (the sixth most widely used term: 121 examples in the Chauvot); passe (5 examples in the Chauvot, generally used in French to refer to a very high and inaccessible pass) are synonyms for col, close to the English or German pass, and we can see that function takes precedence over form.<\/p>\n As for the hundred or so additional terms that appear in our Chauvot, they are completely ignored, let alone the second hundred or so that I discovered in guidebooks, glossaries, etc. or from the inhabitants of our mountainous regions; local terms superbly ignored by the 'o\u00efl' and 'goguette' topographers who drew up our maps, sprinkling them with tautological references.<\/p>\n Can we go further? Would it be interesting to embark on a typology of passes as Ch. Guitton attempted to do in No. 10 of the 100 passes review, identifying and describing ridge line passes, flank passes, syncline bottom passes, combes passes, passes between two cirques, ridge junction passes as well as ridge breaches and ridge breaches, only to conclude that his list could be continued, but that it was all pointless!<\/p>\n This improvised concert has given rise to a certain confusion of genres, which varies from region to region. For the most part, the arbitrariness of the maps relates to the choice of the determinant (pass, pitch, gap, collet, passade, etc., or nothing at all) and the problem often concerns not so much the mountains themselves, as the foothills regions where the choice of naming one or other of the historic passages between two localities \u00abcol de ...\u00bb is sometimes a matter of the purest arbitrariness. Why this one? And not its neighbour, just as \u00abpass\u00bb as it is? Hence the frustrations expressed by many members of the Confr\u00e9rie des 100 Cols. The maps are clearly incomplete, particularly when it comes to secondary passes or passes that have fallen into disuse.<\/p>\n It would undoubtedly be difficult, but perhaps not without interest, from the point of view of heritage restoration, to embark on a more exhaustive inventory of the medium and low mountain passes, in other words a cartography that would aim, on the basis of historical and geographical documentation (old maps, current or old land registers, local guides, local chronicles, etc.), to restore the forgotten passes.<\/p>\n A final remark that has as much to do with etymology as with definition. Whereas for a modern person a pass is a low point in a mountain range, for the Romans and Gallo-Romans it was the highest point on a route. This observation, illustrated by examples such as Gavrus mons on the Peutinger table (today's Col de Cabre), Mont Iseran on the Cassini map (Col de l'Iseran) or Mont Sion (Col de Sion), the highest point on the Geneva-Annecy road, justifies the introduction of mont (and mons) in the glossary, which already includes their equivalents such as the Basque \u00abmendi\u00bb or the Gascon \u00abcap\u00bb.<\/p>\n If you are interested in this subject, please do not hesitate to send me your thoughts or questions, and I will do my best to answer them.<\/p>\n August 1997 - Michel de Br\u00e9bisson \u00c9tymologie Col vient du latin collum dans le sens de cou. Ce mot col est attest\u00e9 vers le XI\u00e8meS en fran\u00e7ais, mais il ne sera utilis\u00e9 dans son sens g\u00e9ographique qu’\u00e0 partir du XVII\u00e8me S, rempla\u00e7ant l’ancien fran\u00e7ais port. Cependant, il fut utilis\u00e9 d\u00e8s les XV\u00e8me et XVI\u00e8me S dans des sens tels que col […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":89709,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[227],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-toponymie"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nDefinition<\/h2>\n
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The dictionary also includes the following details:<\/h3>\n
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At the end of this examination, we can conclude that a collar is characterised by :<\/h3>\n
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The difficulty in defining what a pass is undoubtedly lies in the diversity of the logics involved. There seem to be four:<\/h3>\n
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\n<\/span>
\n- Updated: December 1999<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"