Crimean Gothic

Yes, the format was bad, agreed. But I felt the reversal implied that the word lacked cognates and proposed relationships in other languages, which doesn't seem to be the case. I felt that there were stronger criteria required than for other Germanic languages. Wakuran (talk) 08:55, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Are we still agreed that this words needs some cognates listed? I think so, at least. It seems to be definitely related to *sweltanan.

• swaltaz seems like the most likely origin, because it fits with how verbal nouns of strong verbs were usually formed in Proto-Germanic. Can you find any other descendants of it?

There is Old Norse sultr, Icelandic sultur (“starvation”) and Old English swylt (“death”); both seem to be zero-grade. Do we know enough about Crimean Gothic phonology to tell whether schwalth is o-grade (< *swaltaz) or whether -wa < *-u-? If the latter, it could be the same as the Old Norse word.

I think sult is the West Norse form, Modern Swedish has svält. It's also possible that it's not a direct descendant of the original nominal form, but and independent creation from the verb, I guess. Thank you for your reply, anyway.

Wow, so Swedish svält (“starvation”) <> English svelt (“skinny”)? The svelt entry is missing an etym...

@Eiríkr: I would assume English svelt is just another spelling of svelte, which seems to have a different origin.

@Wakuran: Modern Swedish does have svält (Old Swedish svælter), which is indeed probably influenced by the verb form svälta (Old Swedish svælta); but older Swedish also has sylt (Old Swedish sulter, sylt and sylter) and Danish has sult. I have now discovered, however, that Swedish also has an obsolete svalt (Old Swedish svalter), which does seem to be < *swaltaz.