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What does “hurkapálca” mean in Hungarian?

Every Hungarian craft cupboard holds a bundle of hurkapálca, the thin wooden sticks used for kites, pinwheels and school projects. The name is a leftover from the kitchen: hurka is Hungarian blood or liver sausage, and the sticks were originally used to pin its casing shut. The craft use took over so thoroughly that most speakers never think about the sausage at all.

Hurka itself goes back to húr, an old word for gut or intestine, with a diminutive ending; pálca (“rod, stick”) is a Slavic loan and pálcika is its own diminutive, which is how you also get hurkapálcika. Two more plainly-built words in this pinwheel tutorial: rajzszeg, a “drawing nail” (drawing pin), and szélforgó, a “wind-turner” — the pinwheel itself.