this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2024
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[–] [email protected] 53 points 9 months ago (3 children)

In Italian and French they are caled "Vasistas", from the German "Was ist das?" (What's that?), it's said they called it that way because the first German tourists who saw those windows in France were confused and kept asking for clarifications on how they worked.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 9 months ago (2 children)

In France, a vasistas is a velux roof window. The windows in the picture have been our regular every day windows for a few decades.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Oh really? My bad then. We call those windows from the pic "vasistas" in Italian, and I was always told we copied that word from the French. I just checked whether such a word existed in French, saw that it did, and didn't ask any further questions.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I had to check and apparently a vasistas is originally a transom windows and I’ve one on my house front door. It’s the window panel there is on some doors with worked iron on the other side that you can open but won’t allow people from outside to go in. Historically, people didn’t open the full door when people came to their house, just the window part and German would say was ist das?. And when modern velux windows become popular, they were also nicknamed vasistas by older people for some reason? None of this makes sense.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

AFAIK we also call them velux windows in the UK.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I want this want this to be real and will not investigate further.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

It sounds so real!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

vasistas

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vasistas

its real, though not necessarily the type of window that you described. also exists in Turkish. i have a Turkish colleague who was very proud to explain the origin of that word to us in Germany :D .

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Interesting. Like I said in another comment in Italian it means exactly what I said. From the first line on the topic on Italian wikipedia:

A vasistas (also written wasistas) is a type of window that is also opeaneable on the inside [...]. The system allows the door to rotate down and the opening is delimited by special stops, called opening delimiters.

But apparently, after reading the French wikipedia page they use that word for something else. So it appears that we did steal the word from them, but used it to describe something different.