From Newsgroup: sci.lang
Nagelprobe -- was a Ling. Factoid I learned when I was 19 --- I
think it was from my teacher (of German 101 class). He may have
mentioned Nietzsche and Zarathustra.
From the following 2 links, I get the feeling that...
0. Nagelprobe may have come from Latin [ad unguem]
1. Many educated Germans today don't know both meanings -- drinking
(which is more common?) and [sculptorrCOs practice of running a
fingernail across...]
There's a similar process in designing Autos. (done with
Clay)
2. Both meanings were probably common by the time of Goethe (1749 --
1832)
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I can only find one or two ref's by Google Searching, but
this 1st one is great. --- and the 2nd one is even better!
https://www.dw.com/en/nagelprobe/a-6617013
Nagelprobe rCo DW rCo 09/13/2011
Nagelprobe
Learn a funny, quirky German word each week with DW's Word of the Week
feature. This week: Nagelprobe.
A "nail test" (Nagelprobe) sounds like it should involve a hammer and
result in something getting broken. However, nail refers here to the physiological kind, which is German is also called "Nagel."
It is said that the ever-so-popular expression refers to an old drinking tradition: After a toast, the merrymakers would turn the empty
glass over onto their thumb. A dry thumbnail was proof that every
drop had been drunk -- the theoretical goal. A moist thumbnail
naturally meant try, try again!
Though you'll rarely see Germans with glasses on their thumbs in pubs
today, the term "Nagelprobe" is in common use -- frequently in the realm
of politics -- and refers to a particularly challenging trial.
As for Bavaria's former Premier Guenther Beckstein (pictured), he'll
have to drink up if he wants to pass the old-fashioned "Nagelprobe." But considering that he lost his job earlier this year when he party, the
CSU, failed to get an absolute majority, it seems he couldn't exactly
pass the contemporary "Nagelprobe."
--------- Perhaps here there's a confusion (or
Conflation)
with the [Fine - Tuning] sense.
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https://dokumen.pub/qdownload/nietzsches-thus-spoke-zarathustra-before-sunrise-9781472547187-9781847062215-9781441116536.html
Queue | NietzscherCOs Thus Spoke Zarathustra: Before Sunrise
9781472547187, 9781847062215, 9781441116536 - DOKUMEN.PUB
Nietzsche recounts in EC that the first part of
Zarathustra came to him rCo rCyand above all Zarathustra himself, as a type
. . overwhelmed me rCO rCo
.......... Thus Spoke Zarathustra. ............
When on the same day he writes to his best friend, Franz Overbeck, to
tell
him about the new book, he adds: rCyI am now engaged for a couple
more
days with the Nagelprobe revisions, a work requiring refined hearing,
for
which one cannot be sufficiently alonerCO (324).
The mix of metaphors is significant:
Nagelprobe alludes to the Latin ad unguem, which refers to the sculptorrCOs practice of running a fingernail across a surface to test its smoothness rCo and yet Nietzsche is testing the perfection of his language
by listening to it.19
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