Last Thursday, the three winning schools of the 8th Tísner Contest for the creation of Catalan games, organized by Plataforma per la Llengua, visited the Institut d'Estudis Catalans. Not because, but because it is an activity aimed at teachers who teach Catalan in the territories of four different states (and seven administrations).
The three prize-winning games in this edition were Labisabi from the Open Space La Serra de Sant Pere de Ribes, Eruption volCÀTnica dels Jesuïtes del Poble Sec Sant Pere Claver and Game from the past to the present from the Lluçanès School, in Prats. The creators, from fifth and sixth grade, showed them to the academics of the Philological Section and filled the IEC headquarters with laughter when, after the exhibition, we were able to move from preaching to practice and play a few games of each game.
The preparation of the third prize began the day a few grandparents from Lluca visited the school to make the list of the old words that are the basis of the game.
One of them is flosti. A flosti, in the brand-new region of Lluçanès, is something that is of no use, an andromina, a junk. It is a word that does not appear in Catalan dictionaries but that remains alive. I reviewed the notes of the section "Words on the road" that we did weekly from 2009 to 2016 with Espartac Peran on TV3 Fridays and I found flostis (or flostics) in eight places: Artés, Berga, Matadepera, Rupit, Sant Feliu Sasserra, Sant Hilari, Santpedor and Ullastret.
In most places they used flosti to refer to something that doesn't have a name, a dallonses, a junk, but I also have two more specific senses noted: object that sticks out and penis.
The best definition was given to me by my informant from Matadepera: "A flóstic is the wooden handle that holds the dall, although in the past it also had a phallic connotation."
