Often, learning new vocabulary is a simple matter of memorization and retention: all you really need to know is
hundur means "dog,"
köttur means "cat," et cetera. But when you encounter a word that has numerous different meanings, things can get a little tricky. Today's word is one of those-- it's
þáttur, and it basically means "part," but it also has a large handful of situation-specific uses which I'll touch on here (skip to the end if you want a quick summary of them).
Sometimes, the notion of "multiple meanings" is an illusion; for instance, the English "pit" can mean both "a big hole in the ground" and "a seed like the one inside of a peach." However, "pit" isn't one word with two meanings, but rather two different words that have converged on the same spelling and pronunciation-- the former is from the Old English word
pytt (hole), while the latter is a borrowed Dutch word,
pit (kernel/core). However, other words really do have multiple meanings. Think, for example, of the English word "go;" it is just one word (from the Old English
gān), but it has literally dozens and dozens of different meanings. If you look carefully, though, most of them have something in common (for "go," it's some kind of implied motion, either literal or figurative). The same is true of
þáttur in Icelandic.
Þáttur is the direct descendent of the Old Norse þáttr, which literally meant "a strand of a rope." It also had the secondary meaning of "part" or "section," which is presumably an extension of the idea that a single strand is merely a part of the whole rope. In Icelandic, þáttur is rarely used to mean "strand" anymore (the most common word for that is now þráður), but it does still mean "a part of the whole." From this general sense, we then get numerous situation-specific uses, such as a chapter of a book, an act of a play, an episode of a series, or a factor (both in the general sense, as an integral part of something, and in mathematical jargon, where it means "one part of a multiplication equation"). It can also be used to mean one's share of something, and is often found in the expression að taka þátt í ("to take part in").
The Old Norse word also had a third meaning: "story," particularly one a little shorter than a grand epic
saga. The connection between a strand and a story is a little hard to reconstruct, but we can also see it in our own language, through expressions like "to spin a tale" or (for those of you in the UK) "to spin a yarn." It could be that telling a story is much like weaving threads together to form a rope, or it could be that such stories were often exchanged by women while they were busy weaving. Either way, this tertiary meaning also survives in the modern Icelandic word, although usually in reference to more modern types of stories:
þáttur is often used as a shortened form of the word
sjónvarpsþáttur ("television show"). This sense has spawned numerous compound words, such as
gamanþáttur/
grínþáttur (comedy),
spjallþáttur (talk show), and the newcomer
raunveruleikaþáttur (reailty show). It can also short for
útvarpsþáttur (radio show), although those shows are declining in popularity.
So… how should one translate
þáttur? Thread? Part? Story? It's hard to say; all of the translations mentioned above are valid, but it really depends on the situation. My own searches into the matter have shown the most common meanings are "part" and "[TV] show." For stories in general, you're probably better of using
saga or
sögn. For "thread," you should only use
þáttur if you're deliberately trying to sound archaic; otherwise, go for
þráður. And for "part," you could use
þáttur but you could also try
hluti or
kafli (the latter of which is often used to mean "chapter" or "episode"). It's up to you!
WORD SUMMARY:
þátt/ur, -ar, þættir (m): part, episode, chapter; show, series
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