2726: Housecats and Stoves Jun 7, 202

The normal word in German for an indoor cat is a ‘’Hauskatze”  (i.e. housecat) but a slightly cute way of saying it is “Stubentiger” or hyper-literally broken down as “stove tiger”. The tiger part of that is understandable enough if clearly tongue-in-cheek, but the stove is curious. Looking at the English word ‘stove’, it is first referred to a heated room, like a sauna or bathhouse, and then later denoted the source of the heat, but still more in the sense of a furnace. Only later with the technological innovations leading to the modern stovetop did it take its modern sense, and the word ‘stew’ derived from a similar path.

Meanwhile, in German, this same root also changed slightly, denoting a living room where presumably the main source of heating in the home was located. This has led to a more generic sense of hominess as seen in “Stubentiger”, though “Stube” for a living room is not typically used anymore outside of some regional dialects, and Wohnzimmer (literally “living + room”) is preferred.