Wool Or Polyester?

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Can you tell me what wool is? You may think that I should get the first prize for the stupidest question of the day. Hold it! Not so fast. Let's see what we find on the net on the topic. "Wool is the fine, soft curly or wavy hair forming the coat of a sheep, goat, rabbit, camel, llama, alpaca, bison, and yak, especially when shorn and prepared for use in making cloth or yarn." If you think that now everything has been said, you are mistaken. Today I got a catalogue from a fashion company from which I learnt that 'wool' is obviously a look, not a material. Anything can be 'wool' if you want it to be. Who'd 'a thunk it?! What with winter approaching in the Northern hemisphere several articles are shown which one should buy now: caps, scarves, gloves, etc. It's typical for the German language to 'glue' nouns together thus creating so-called compound words. (English does this to a small extent, too. 'Bus' + 'driver' becomes 'busdriver'). What I find in the catalogue are wool-caps*, wool-scarves* and wool-gloves* with the added information: "Material 100% polyester". Can you believe it? Either the makers of the catalogue are idiots or the producers of the items are liars or both and the two have found each other. Another German compound word comes to mind, namely 'Volks-verdummung*'. The literal translation would be 'people-stultification'*. Why am I writing about this? Who cares? I do! Today I feel like working myself up about such blatant stupidity. ----- *I've used hyphens so that you can understand the words better. German has no hyphens in compound words which can make them difficult to understand for foreigners. They can have dozens of letters. There is no limit. My latest find in the newspaper of today: 'Verkehrsinfrastrukturfinanzierungsgesellschaft' [46 letters!] which means 'transport infrastructure financing company'. ----- pic: pixabay