A Note About Staupa as a Cup

The Middle High German word stouf meant both a steep mountain and a cup. But the earlier proto-German word staupa, from which stouf derived, was also used to refer to a cup, as well as a mountain.

Surprisingly, it appeared on occasion in Latin as the word staupus. The following web site makes a note that staupus entered Latin through the Franks (the Germanic tribe that gave us Charles Martel, Pepin, and Charlemagne, and after which France is named):

THE TEXTUAL TRADITION OF HINCMAR, OF REIMS' VISIOBERNOLD I (Page 120)

The word " staupus ", for goblet or measure is of Frankish origin (staup) . 28

28. See W . WARTBURG, Französisch Etymologisches Wörterbuch (Bonn 1928-Basel 1966), 17 under " staup " ; W. MEYER-LÜBKE, Romanisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch (Heidelberg 1935), p . 680.

Found at: http://documents.irevues.inist.fr/bitstream/handle/2042/3456/04%20TEXTE.pdf.txt?sequence=3

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The term survives in English as steep, steeple, stoup (the basin that holds holy water) and the more secular but less common stoup or stoop (a drinking cup, a flagon with the dragon, if you will). Saith the first clown to the second:

"Go, get thee to Yaughan, and fetch me a stoup of liquor." - Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 1.

Reference to a cup is more common in some Norse languages, such as the Norwegian staup (goblet) and the Icelandic staupum (a shot glass, 0.03 liters, about 1 ounce). The drink typically associated with the staupum appears to be aquavit (water of life?). Google Translate, in fact, will translate the Icelandic term staupum as "aquavit."

For example, from http://andresi.blogcentral.is/eldra/2006/10/, the phrase "Ég hitti annan þeirra á barnum eitt skiptið og þá var hann að hella í sig fjórum staupum af Vodka og keyptir sér svo einn bjór í leiðinni." translates as "I met one of them at the bar one time and he was pouring himself four aquavits of Vodka and then bought a beer in the process." The correct translation (at least the one most of us English-speakers would understand) is "four shots of Vodka."

This site http://www.tanni.is offers a flask with four shot glasses. They are the components of what appears to be some sort of drinking game. The contents include: "Vasapeli (0,18 ltr) með fjórum staupum (0,03 ltr) og trekt (6 hlutir)," which translates to "Pocket Game (0.18 liters) with four aquavits (0.03 liters) and funnel (6 items)."

(I suspect that what is translating as "game" may simply be a flask, and this whole collection might not be part of a drinking game after all.)

As you can see in the picture, what translates as "four aquavits" are what we would call shot glasses.