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"paździerz" is harl (wooden part) of flax or hemp. The word "pazdzierz" is rarely used in Polish.

Thank you guys for enlightening me about the word "shive" - my colleagues from work always use it to describe the wooden part of flax and hemp. I have never heard the word "harl". Could it be the American word? Please help, as I work in flax and hemp "business".

Nancy feels that Zooba's shives might be 'sheaves' the plural form of sheaf. The origin of sheaf is a bundle of cut wheat tide together and stood upright to dry. Latterly it is used to described a bundle of papers kept together, say a lot of report pages before they are stapled together - a sheaf of papers. I have never come across 'shive' in the English language, nor has my major dictionary..
'Harl' in Britain is, according to my aforementioned dictionary, a Scottish word meaning to finish exterior walls with cement mixed with small stones = roughcast. There is also a small reference to 'harling' from 'harl' meaning to drag. I seem to recall having heard the word used as part of the weaving process where a piece of wood (the shuttle?) is dragged across the wool in the cloth weaving process.
What a language and usage we all share!
Leslie

In this case, Leslie's English and my American disctionaries are similar - I would use "sheaf" or "sheaves" in the way he describes. I have never heard either the word "shive" or the word "harl" before, and my dictionary defines harl as a Scottish word as Leslie describes.

I am still wondering about "the wooden part" of flax and hemp. Do you mean the tough innermost fibers?

Google to the rescue. When I searched for "flax + shive" I got a bunch of hits that indicated shive is a contaminant of flax... learn something new everyday!

Zooba, I would just say that the way you folks use the word is specific to the industry, and we lowly mortals just don't know the jargon.

Now to go google "harl" (again).

Nancy

definitions according to a dictionary found by Ask Jeeves.

Harl (n.) A filamentous substance; especially, the filaments of flax or hemp.

Harl (n.) A barb, or barbs, of a fine large feather, as of a peacock or ostrich, -- used in dressing artificial flies.

Thank you very much. I talked to my friend who spent half a year working at a flax farm in Florida (or was it a hemp farm?). He confirmed that the word "shives" and "hurds" (hemp equivalent of shive) was not used there. I must google the word myself - it is likely most of the hits come from our institute are may not be reliable source of good English usage.
BTW A verb "to google" amazes me. Flexibilty of English is incredible!

"Flexibilty of English is incredible!"

yes, I too never stop marvelling about that.
But we have a Polish version of 'to google' by now - guglowa/c, isn't it?

I must say Polish is getting more and more creative as well. On the whole I accept the change happenning. Only "znikla" is hard for me to swallow.

You have to google the word shive or harl along with hemp or flax. If you try the word by itself, you get people with that last name, or other irrelevant hits.

It is too long to say "I used the Google search engine to look up this word" - so using it as a verb is easier <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Now, please tell me what "znikla" means...