Anorak

Over to Wikipedia: "The word anorak comes from the Greenlandic (Kalaallisut) word annoraaq. It did not appear in English until 1924; an early definition is 'a beaded item worn by Greenland women or brides in the 1930s'. In the early 1950s it was made from nylon, but changed to poplin by 1959, when it was featured in Vogue magazine as a fashion item. In 1984, The Observer used the term to refer to the type of people who wore it and subsequently, in the United Kingdom, it is sometimes used as a mildly derogatory term."

This is from a page headed Parka, where 'anorak' is treated as a synonym. Wikipedia continues: "The word parka is derived from the Nenets language. In the Aleutian Islands the word simply means 'animal skin'. It first entered the English written record in a 1625 work by Samuel Purchas."

The Nenets people live mainly on the western half of Russia's Arctic coast – "between [the] Kola and Taymyr peninsulas." They are also known as Samoyed, but this is considered derogatory as it means "self–eater" in Russian. 'Parka' is the only word, apart from 'Nenets' itself, that has entered English from their language.

The Aleutian Islands are some way from the Nenets' homelands: they form an arc running from Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula to the Alaska Peninsula, separating the Bering Sea from the Pacific Ocean.

© Haydn Thompson 2020