[Tlhingan-hol] Klingon Word of the Day: chevwI' tlhoy'

[De'vID]

On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 4:26 PM, Steven Boozer <sboozer at uchicago.edu> wrote:
>> Klingon Word of the Day for Thursday, February 14, 2013
>>
>> Klingon word: chevwI' tlhoy'
>> Part of speech: noun
>> Definition: territorial wall (e.g. Berlin Wall)
>
> Source:  startrek.klingon (12/7/1998):
>
> The wall around a city is a {yergho}, which is apparently derived from {yer} "domain, holdings, territory" plus {gho} "circle."

This is an allusion to a Biblical story.

> A wall which divides a territory into parts (such as the Berlin Wall) is also called a {tlhoy'}, even though neither side of it is the interior of a structure.  On occasion, for clarity, such a wall is termed a {chevwI' tlhoy'} "separator wall") or a {pIn tlhoy'}, literally "boss wall," presumably dating back to a time when each subterritory had a specific person in charge."

I just now got the joke behind this.

-- 
De'vID