I’d never heard or seen “chillblain” in my life, even though I’m fluent in English, so I looked it up in a dictionary… and it’s not there. I don’t think this word exists; if it does, it’s so esoteric that hardly anyone would recognize it. So I looked up engelure in Google Translate, and it says it means “frostbite”. Okay then, why doesn’t the English definition just say “frostbite”? It’s weird on confusing the way it’s written now.
BTW, I would be happy to maintain this course if nobody else is. Maybe “admin” means it’s abandoned. I couldn’t figure out how to ask memrise to be added as a course owner ever since they told us they would stop using email as a contact method. I asked here, but nobody from memrise answered:
It is definitely a word, and in common use in New Zealand.
chil·blain
/ˈCHilˌblān/
noun
1.
a painful, itching swelling on the skin, typically on a hand or foot, caused by poor circulation in the skin when exposed to cold.
Huh! I’ve never heard of it with one “l”, either. Maybe it’s not used in American English?
The dictionary app on my computer doesn’t have it listed with one “l” either.
On Wikipedia, it says chilblains (plural) “is a medical condition that occurs when a predisposed individual is exposed to cold and humidity, causing tissue damage. It is often confused with frostbite and trench foot.” In other words, it is not frostbite, though people might think it is.
So does this French word mean “frostbite”, as Google translate thinks?
Or does this French word actually mean “chilblains”?
Interesting. I confirm “chilblain” is not the “usual” term in American English.
ps @cos I agree some of these “admin” course are frustrating, and with no way to contact whoever the powers may be to become a curator of the course is double frustrating. Maybe a topic for a new thread ?
If you want to take over the maintenance of the course I believe you can contact @Lien and ask if the course is abandoned and if so be added as a contributor
WordReference translates “engelure” as “chilblain”. So do Reverso and Larousse. Linguee has both “chilblain” and “frostbite”. So it looks like it usually means “chilblain” but can mean “frostbite” in some cases at least.
If any of you would like to be made contributors to a course, get in touch. Please include the course link so I can whether the creator is still around. If they have been active in the last year, I’ll email them to ask their permission. If they haven’t been active in a long time, reply and agree with the contributor request or don’t reply at all, I’ll add you as a contributor.
I meant using any method available to get Liens attention, tagging, private message, whatever, not everyone can send private messages but I believe everyone can tag. I have seen Lien offer to do this (verify if a course had been abandoned and grant willing volunteers the ability to be added as contributors) in the past.
@Lien - I included a link to this course at the top.
I don’t think anyone is currently maintaining the course, so nobody will fix the confusingly formatted English for this word even after we settle out what the best translation of it is. There were several other problems reported on this course that did not get fixed, but I forget what they are and the course forum is gone so we’ll just have to rediscover them.
