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Etymology scriptorium

Welcome to the Etymology scriptorium. This is the place to cogitate on etymological aspects of the Wiktionary entries.

August 2024

Etymology tree competition

Please find me the word with the most yellow boxes when using the {{etymon}} tree template. pogchamp is a good start but I feel that you can do better. 2600:8800:718D:8D00:41D6:6DFA:7C66:C0B5 03:02, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

I think theymab currently holds the record (52). Ioaxxere (talk) 22:24, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

English Munich

We say it's borrowed from German München, but I don't buy it: Munich is significantly different from the German term, but aligns with many other exonyms used throughout Europe, like French Munich, Spanish Múnich, Italian Monaco, and so on. Wikipedia claims the ultimate origin is Old High German Muniche, from zu den Munichen (“to the monks”), but I don't know if that's trustworthy. Theknightwho (talk) 15:33, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

I would initially assume it has passed through French. Wakuran (talk) 16:39, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

This doesn't answer your question, but in looking for an answer I noticed that an older English form of the name is Miniken, which is said (see sources I added to minikin) to derive directly from then-contemporary German/Bavarian Münichen with typical unrounding of [ʏ] to [ɪ].
BTW, controversial linguist Theo Vennemann has argued the city's ultimate etymology is not, as usually given, from monks (he says this, basically that the city was likely settled and (he assumes) named before the monks got there, and that other Münchens like Waldmünchen aren't connected with monks)... but Vennemann's ideas are unpopular. - -sche (discuss) 17:34, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

So what is it that he's suggesting? An unknown Pre-Indo-European/ Pre-Germanic substrate? Wakuran (talk) 20:02, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

Knowing Vennemann, he probably thinks it's Semitic. —Mahāgaja · talk 21:18, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

I only read the first few pages of the section that was about München, in which he talked about München and other places with (in his opinion) related names having been in the Celtic speech area in the past, from which I got the sense he was speculating that it was Celtic. - -sche (discuss) 21:44, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia claims Munich "entered English with French spelling", but doesn't cite a source AFAICT; other (unreliable, user-generated) websites similar suggest it entered via French, but the closest I've spotted to something reliable is a nearly-century-old Report on Foreign Geographic Names published in 1932 by the United States Geographic Board, which mentions Munich and Cologne as examples of "important cities in Germany [which] are known in English-speaking countries by their French names". Maybe that's enough to support a "possibly...": Ultimately from the German name München (or the form Münichen found in some medieval texts), possibly via French Munich. To-do: I'd like to find out how early Munich and any other forms of the name have been used in English, as to whether they displaced or co-existed with or predated Miniken (which is attested ante 1566 in Hoby's Travels). - -sche (discuss) 01:42, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

@-sche Here's a cite from 1670 (3rd paragraph, which also mentions Cologne; and there are plenty more from that period), but I'm struggling to find anything pre-1600. Theknightwho (talk) 01:56, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

Here is what seems to be the earliest at EEBO, which was printed in 1623, but the information about the author suggests the first half of the 16th century for the text (see this for details. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:16, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, both of you. The earliest I spotted with a definite date was this from 1610. Mexia/Mejia's work is interesting because so many authors seem to have had hands in writing that English version. The hits in the Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse seem to be in later footnotes, bibliographic data, etc, not in the portions of the text that date to Middle English, but I didn't check them all exhaustively. - -sche (discuss) 02:24, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

до встречи

(editing because I worded kind of badly)

I was wondering how long this greeting has been used for. Did it originate in Russian or was it used in an earlier language and then carried over to Russian? Did it start out as до скорой встречи and then people shortened it? Same with до скорого. Zbutie3.14 (talk) 23:13, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

In the Russian National Corpus, the earliest mention of the formula "до встречи" is 1825.

The earliest mention of the formula "до скорой встречи" is 1932, "до новой встречи" — 1930.

Of course, the Corpus is not complete, but these results can help to estimate relative frequencies of the variants. Chyyr (talk) 17:21, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

European words for cabbage

I stumbled on Old East Slavic капуста (kapusta), and was struck by the parallels with Old French caboce / Old Northern French caboche, the ancestor of English cabbage. The obvious origin for both would be Latin caput, since cabbage is notable among European cole crops in forming heads- so named because their size and shape is reminiscent of the human head. There are of course phonological problems: the b in caboche doesn't work for a derivative of the same word that gave us English chief, and I'm not sure about the с (s) in капуста. The ce / che suggests affrication of the t, which might explain the Old East Slavic ending- but I know very little about Old East Slavic historical phonology. At any rate, the Old French entry doesn't buy the "caput" angle, and the Old East Slavic entry doesn't etymologies don't even mention it, so take my hunch for what it's worth. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:45, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

@Chuck Entz: Seems like they used a kind of fake word in cloisters from which English cabbage and German Kappes descend, caputia or caputium is mentioned in etymological sources, but from glosses in medieval lists, so I don’t find cites. The Romans probably used brassica and crambē, amongst other and more specific terms. So with the connection to ancient horticultural learning lost, the Barbarians used a malformed Verlegenheitswort from caput (“head”) and one from a designation of the plant product’s other half cōlis (“stalk”) which brought us kale / Kohl. Could even be a pseudo-foreignism, a phenomenon barely known to traditional philologers who are cited for the same claim over and over.

I also cannot admit that a similar word with the same meaning under medieval conditions came about twice without confusion; the etymology in the Russian just was inexactly copied, in Vasmer it actually says that this composta, meaning a kind of preparation, indeed we have an older meaning of German Kompost ‘a kind of preserved cabbage’—the modern technical one is just a 19th century borrowing of compost, itself in this sense from English compost, and in the needed 12th century kumpost—, was contaminated with our German word. Moreover the contamination of the two words happened in German already, we read in the linked Grimm entry from 1868 “es vermengte sich mit dem gleichbed. kappes oder kappus, daher auch kamppust: elixapium, kāppust, kappuscrut”.

There we have the form. Late 12th-century Middle High German kāppust seemingly with end-stress → Old Russian and Russian Church Slavonic (in Vasmer year 1193) капуста (kapusta) → in the 16th century what has become the late Ottoman Turkish قاپوسقه (kapuska), because kraut can be sent over long distances well. And the feminine Romance forms not meaning cabbage like Italian composta are overrated. Fay Freak (talk) 18:47, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

איוודע

Any clues? I stumbled on this near-stub earlier, and was surprised to find that it wasn't just made up by that user. Insaneguy1083 (talk) 02:14, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

Sounds very likely based on ווידער#Etymology_2, as in the pleasantry "ווידערזען", auf Wiedersehen. Danny lost (talk) 22:49, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

I can't really see either the phonetics or semantics matching up. I figured that it could be a variant of German über or übrig, such as Yiddish איבער, but maybe it isn't such a great suggestion, either. (Luxembourgish apparently has iwwer, though, if one'd assume Proto-Yiddish was largely a Franconian variety.) Wakuran (talk) 00:55, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Are you saying that you can't see the semantics matching in again--next?

About the phonetics, I have no idea how to tell Frankonian from the rest of the sausages, but the Yiddish I have heard loves and stresses initial א's. Here it may be a contraction of the "auf"; or the general and common interjection אָ#Yiddish; or from אַבי#Yiddish (which would already explain the i vowel without recourse to dialectic differences); or whatever it is in the expression אָ גְּרוֹיְסֶע מְצִיאֶה (a contraction of איינע#Yiddish?). Danny lost (talk) 21:45, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

It is auf + die. See here. Vahag (talk) 12:44, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Is javanese "tiyang", in the sense of "people" Or "person" Came from a contraction of tau(or some variation of it) and Hyang (which means god)?

It could be since javanese has a tendency to bastardize names and likes to shorten phrases to a single word Husritheguy (talk) 05:15, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

ахосал

RFV of the etymology. Need sources, this is just one of many. — This unsigned comment was added by Наименее Полезное (talk • contribs) at 15:18, 5 August 2024 (UTC).

We tried once to get to the bottom of this etymology: Wiktionary:Etymology_scriptorium/2023/October#ахосал. I suggested at the time that someone contact the relevant Belarusian scientific authority (link in the previous post) to get the etymology - I'm not sure if anyone followed up. Chernorizets (talk) 04:11, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

Chilodochona

Chilodochona is the type genus of the family Chilodochonidae, but I have not determined its etymology. Any ideas? Thanks. Gerardgiraud (talk) 18:57, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Possibly χιλός (khilós, “green fodder”) (it is a chromist species) + chona from Χοάνη (Khoánē, “funnel”) (shape, compared to similar species), not sure about od: cf. -oid, ὁδός (hodós, “way, road”). DCDuring (talk) 21:43, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

I was able to track down the original description here, but Swedish isn't one of my better languages. It says "På mundelarna af vissa brachyurer fann jag, såsom redan inledningsvis nämdes, under mitt vistande på den zool. stationen vid Kristineberg sommaren 1892 en ny, egendomlig infusorieform, som jag gifvit slägtnamnet Chilodochona;, bildadt i öfverens- stämmelse med namnen Spirochona STEIN och Heliochona PLATE, hvilka former den ock tyckes komma närmast." It was found on the mouthparts of crabs, so I would guess there's some connection to Ancient Greek χεῖλος (kheîlos, “mouth of any animal”). As for the "d": I'm guessing it's part of the stem of the noun- in Ancient Greek d+s->s. Chuck Entz (talk) 12:56, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Sadly, FF translate doesn't do Swedish and trying Danish didn't work for most of it. I couldn't get Google translation either. DCDuring (talk) 13:13, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Yes, Google seems to translate the Swedish fairly correctly and the name seems to refer to the chelicerae (the mouth parts) of crustaceans. Thank you very much @Chuck Entz for finding the original description, even in Swedish. Thank you all for your so valuable help. Gerardgiraud (talk) 17:32, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

It's pretty formal and old-fashioned Swedish in pre-reformed spelling. Today gifvit = givit, slägtnamnet = släktnamnet, bildadt = bildat, öfverens-stämmelse = överenstämmelse, hvilka = vilka, ock = också, tyckes = tycks. Wakuran (talk)¨

काम्बोज

Can this really be said to be a vṛddhi derivative? Given its unknown, almost certainly foreign origin, it seems more likely just a variant or doublet, much like the sort of variation found in Greek and Latin words thought to be from substrata. — Ganjabarah (talk) 21:03, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

It is not incorrect in the grammar of the language, like Umlaut is in many cases not historically umlauted in German, and √-root does nott equal *-root. So the description of vṛddhi as the "strongest ablaut-grade" is valid but not necessarily etymological.

The loanword dilemma is irrelevant because Beekes on vrddi states that "However, it is unlikely that we are dealing with a regular morphological procedure of PIE date." (Beekes 2011:181)

If this is understood, the entry is sufficiently clear. Alisheva (talk) 19:56, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

It is most certainly relevant because:

• Not all indoeuropeanists (nor a vast majority) agree that vṛddhi is not a PIE phenomenon, and more importantly Wiktionary does not; see Category:Proto-Germanic vrddhi derivatives and especially Category:Proto-Indo-European vrddhi derivatives.
• Even if Sanskrit vṛddhi is not from PIE, it is almost certainly inherited from at least one ancestor, and if so it certainly makes sense to speak of it diachronically.
• Whether a derivational process existed in an ancestral language is not a prerequisite for it being diachronically analyzable, nor for it having explanatory power for etymologies. Being a request for verification of an etymology, this is an issue of whether the word was formed from vṛddhi, not whether it is synchronically analyzable as vṛddhi. If not, the etymology section should be rephrased as “Unknown, but related to कम्बोज (kamboja) with which it forms a vṛddhi pair” or “Unknown, but equivalent to a vṛddhi derivative of कम्बोज (kamboja)” or something along those lines.

— Ganjabarah (talk) 01:22, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

This is a classic Sanskrit vṛddhi-derivative with the expected meaning and all. It was extremely productive, derivable from pretty much anything. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 22:40, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, but I'm not knowledgeable enough in Sanskrit to know what process that is. Does कम्बोज (kamboja) refer to the place called Kamboja? That gloss is not listed there and probably needs to be added if it can be verified. Otherwise, the semantic process would seem to be forming hyponymy or more vaguely attributive. — Ganjabarah (talk) 01:22, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

birth

English: inherited from Old English, or borrowed through Old Norse? The etymologies at birth and Middle English birthe go with the latter, but the desctree at Proto-West Germanic *burþi implies an unbroken continuation from Old English. Perhaps it should be considered a merger of the two? — Ganjabarah (talk) 00:00, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

A lot of sources say directly from Old Norse; the GMW entry could just be wrong. DJ K-Çel (contribs ~ talk) 00:07, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

admin and admiral from same influence?

Mostly speculation on my part, but it seems like these two might share the same ultimate origin, or at least influenced each other via culture contact, I'm probably wrong but at least currently, our etymology sections doesn't really disprove it. Akaibu (talk) 01:40, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

No. Theknightwho (talk) 01:52, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

I figured that at least the first part ad- had the same origin, and that admiral was related to admirable and admire, but apparently admiral was a borrowing from Arabic (although it had some conflation with Latin admiror). Wakuran (talk) 12:33, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

sparr#English

Why would the ow or we from ME sparwe have been dropped? Influenced by ME verb (Ety. 2) sparren (“rush, dart”)? DCDuring (talk) 19:51, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

English has several examples of doublets where one ends in -ow and the other doesn't: mead/meadow and shade/shadow are two that spring to mind. Generally, the short version comes from the Old English nominative singular, and the long version comes from oblique cases. —Mahāgaja · talk 20:49, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, "from the Old English nominative singular" is what I needed. DCDuring (talk) 12:45, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

In feminine wō-stems where the nominative -wō becomes -u, then -Ø after a heavy syllable (applies to mǣd yet not to sċeadu); however spearwa is a masculine wan-stem, so we would expect to continue to see the -w throughout. Leasnam (talk) 03:22, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

Old English has the combining form spear- (as in spearhafoc (“sparrowhawk”)); and Old Norse has sparr, spǫrr (“sparrow”) (Icelandic spörr). The modern form may simply be a borrowing of the Norse. Leasnam (talk) 03:08, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

Although Old Norse had -rv- in several inflected forms. Its descendants mostly have -rv- in the nominative form. Wakuran (talk) 11:43, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

But the genitive singular is spǫrs or sparrar (“sparrow's”). It's possible from these forms that English sparr derives. Leasnam (talk) 22:02, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

As far as the etymology goes, it still needs attention, because the nominative singular of Old English spearwa is SPEARWA. It's not w-less. Leasnam (talk) 21:56, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

That's a good point, which hadn't occurred to me when I left my comment above. I do think a Norse origin of sparr is more likely now I come to think about it. —Mahāgaja · talk 06:35, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

I've tweaked the etymology. Please take a look Leasnam (talk) 16:31, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

I question "From dialectal sparr (“house-sparrow”)": are we saying the word is no longer as dialectal as it once was? If that is true, could it be better said in a label ("originally dialectal", now... what? common? literary? uncommon?) ? Deriving an English word X meaning Y from an English word X meaning Y feels weird to me. (AFAICT sparr is not in the OED, and as of the time of the EDD was still listed as narrowly dialectal, found in Kent and Sussex.) - -sche (discuss) 17:17, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

I get what you mean, as I considered the same. The sense itself should probably just have a dialectal label, but I'm not sure how "standard" it is. I know it's dialectal, but is it also in any general use ? Leasnam (talk) 17:07, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

What is the Etymology of the "source" portion of the term "source code"

Is it an opposite of "target/machine" code, or it is the equivalent of "original"? 林博仁 (talk) 04:08, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

It is a written source, that would produce actual running software, basically. Wakuran (talk) 11:41, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

The earliest combination was source code and object code, that is, code resulting from compilation. Since code originally meant machine code, the term source code was a bit of a misnomer. The original terminology was source program and machine program, as used in the October 15, 1956, edition of IBM’s FORTRAN Programmer's Reference Manual:

The IBM Mathematical Formula Translating System Fortran is an automatic coding system for the IBM 704 EDPM. More precisely, it is a 704 program which accepts a source program written in a language — the Fortran language — closely resembling the ordinary language of mathematics, and which produces an object program in 704 machine language, ready to be run on a 704.

Clearly, the sense is that the source program is the source of the code found in the object program. However, already by 1957, the pair source code – object code had become common parlance, and the sense of code was extended to program text in a high-level programming language such as FORTRAN. This was to be expected, as the verb was used indiscriminately for writing programs in machine code and in a high-level language. Only later did code become a countable noun with the sense “program” (now more commonly “app”). I am not certain what gave rise to the modifier “object”, also seen in object machine (the machine on which the object code should run, not necessarily the same as the one that does the compilation), but it is likely that of its sense “goal, end or purpose of something”.  --Lambiam 09:52, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Ольга / Вольга ("Olga")

The English and Old Ruthenian entries derive it from Old Norse Helga, which is the generally accepted etymology. The Belarussian entry adds intermediate Church Slavonic and Greek etyma (whose existence is denied on the Russian talk page). The Russian entry instead promotes a connection with the river "Volga". I'm not a slavicist, but this seems spurious to me. How would the /l/ have become soft? And how would it have lost its initial /v/? (The fact that the Belurussian does have /v/ means little because v-prothesis is a widespread Slavic tendency, but v-loss to my knowledge is not.) So basically: The Volga claim should be substantiated or stricken. And the different entries should be brought in line accordingly. 92.218.236.20 21:58, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

The etymology section for English Olga writes that it is “from Russian О́льга (Ólʹga), a saints' name borne by Russian royalty”. The saint in question is Saint Olga of Kiev, originally a Varangian, so where did she get her name from? As she was baptized Elena, it was not then a Christian name; it was the female equivalent of Оле́г (Olég), also originally a Varangian name, most certainly not from *Воле́г.  --Lambiam 08:39, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

I've removed the bogus claim of a relation with the name of the river.  --Lambiam 21:16, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

Proto-West Germanic *falljō

At *falljō, Victar insists that the alternative reconstruction *fillō (given by several dictionaries) should have become *fellō, despite my lengthy dismissal of this here. So either he has some alternative theory about the development of Proto-Germanic, or he hasn't even read my post.

I'll further mention that the idea of using Middle Dutch 'felle' as a descendant of *falljō is very much dubious as I point out here (it is transparently a nominalised adjective and the first occurrence is even in a text translated from Old French). Exarchus (talk) 22:52, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

From what I understand, said page is against Wiktionary policy because it prefers to give a form *falljō while there is no source for this, while *fillō (or *filljō) is mentioned in the literature. This is against following rule: "Pages should generally be named after whichever form has the broadest support among contemporary experts in the field, without Wiktionary weighing in on which form is more or less accurate"

@Mellohi! @Caoimhin ceallach @Victar Exarchus (talk) 07:51, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

On the project, we have leeway to normalize reconstructions. For instance, {{R:gem:HGE}} reconstructs *mōđaʒaz, while we give *mōdagaz, yet still cite it as such. As with reconstruction conventions, we are also not beholden to the etymologies of other dictionaries, and may use our own digression. --{{victar|talk}} 09:16, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Giving *fellō instead of *fillō is not a 'normalisation' (yes, that you use an ō with macron is a valid example of normalisation).

Plus, you can't give a reference for *falljō, so naming the page after it is against Wiktionary policy. Exarchus (talk) 09:32, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

• I have to agree with Exarchus with regards to a-umlaut. A-umlaut is too unreliable to project into the proto-West Germanic level, and on top of the Frisian counterexamples that Exarchus gave earlier, we can also add German Sturm and Schiff etc. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 17:33, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

I agree with @Exarchus that a-umlaut wouldn't have affected *fillō. I also agree that Middle Dutch felle is more likely to be the weak adjective and therefore not evidence for *falljō. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 23:34, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

So I suppose that either *falljō should be moved to *fillō (or *filljō), complying with Wiktionary policy, or else simply removing the page altogether as it's simply there for one hypothetical (Latin) descendant. Exarchus (talk) 11:58, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

چاپه

@Fay Freak, Vahagn Petrosyan A previous version of the etymology stated a derivation from Latin sappa. — Fenakhay ^{(حيطي · مساهماتي)} 11:10, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

The previous etymology is the most widespread one, but the newbie prefers the native explanation found in Nshanyan. See also here. @Dortylez: why do you prefer the native explanation? Vahag (talk) 11:45, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

And there, Çetinkaya specifically doesn’t list çapa (“hoe”) from this root, probably by a combination of reasons including the root’s semantics lastly found in Turkish not matching up, the dialectal distribution of either the root or the particular word (it would have variants if dialectal?) not sufficing, and such a term not finding analogy in other Turkic languages. The derivation type of yaygara and yara here having been used is also quite unlikely if we discount all those problems. Fay Freak (talk) 12:22, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

It is common for dialectal variants to be adapted into the standart language in Turkish. And yes indeed, Turkish dialectal terms has a lot of them. I updated the page again with more Turkic cognates and also a list of Turkish words that is from the same root for semantic comparison. It pretty much is analogical to terms in other Turkic languages. Etymology of "yara" is quite controversial(it might be from yar- + -gA, however this elision would be quite irregular for words ending in /l/,/n/,/ɾ/ or /m/) so i'll be deleting that one. I think this etymology is adequate right now. Dortylez (talk) 17:24, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Proto-Indo-European *gʷeh₁w-

@Victar claims here that " *-eh₁w- is the only form that works for the iranian". I've been taking a very close look at this and I'm now quite sure that Victar's claim (going against LIV and Cheung) is wrong.

To point out all the mistakes made here and on the subpages would really be very tiresome. For example, reconstructing Avestan 'gāuš' (see *ǰáHuti) as coming from "3sg.inj.act. *gáHut" already shows three misunderstandings (two phonetical and one morphological). Avestan 'xratugūtō' (see *HabiǰáHuti) is also misanalysed, which is actually fairly important to the reconstruction (as LIV mentions). A form like 𐬔𐬏𐬥𐬀𐬊𐬙𐬌 (gūnaoti) doesn't need a laryngeal to get a long vowel, as this is a regular lengthening of 'u' in an open initial syllable.

Then at Proto-Balto-Slavic *gáuˀtei, Victar seems to have mistaken 'gáuˀtei' for a 3sg. form, while this is an infinitive. Otherwise, he'll have to admit that reconstructing a root present here doesn't explain the conjugation of Lithuanian gáuti at all. The phonetical derivation also doesn't work by the way.

And lastly about Proto-Celtic *boudi: while a derivation of a dʰe-present seems theoretically possible, then adding a non-productive suffix -i (not the same as *-is), which only occurs (as far as I could find) in *móri, is beyond all plausibility.

Simply sticking to what academics say might not be such a bad idea. Exarchus (talk) 17:33, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for catching my error of giving the 3sg.inj.act., instead of the intended 2sg.inj.act., and my very obviously misplacement of 𐬑𐬭𐬀𐬙𐬎𐬔𐬏𐬙𐬋 (xratugūtō) on the wrong page. I've since gone and fixed those. Simply because 𐬔𐬏𐬥𐬀𐬊𐬙𐬌 (gūnaoti) could be derived otherwise, don't mean it is. Are there any other Iranian "misunderstandings" that need pointing out?

If there are errors in the Balto-Slavic reconstruction, I implore you to fix them, however sources unilaterally support a laryngeal in the root for the BS.

Calling a PIE neuter i-stem reconstruction "beyond all plausibility" is a beguilingly absurd statement. We actually have quite a few neuter i-stem nouns in Hittite, for example, like 𒄷𒉿𒅆 (ḫu-wa-ši), 𒄑𒁾𒁉 (^GIŠtup-pi₂), etc., which are substantives of i-stem adjectives. How would you derive PC neuter i-stem *boudi? --{{victar|talk}} 21:50, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

No, Avestan 'gāuš' isn't a 2sg.inj.act. (Simply take the time to look at what Cheung says.) The intervocalic laryngeal would not make the preceding vowel long.

That 'xratugūtō' was on the wrong page was not my point, it just isn't a 'ta-participle' (which should be clear from the translation and actually also from the ending, if you assume it to be a nom.pl.).

That Balto-Slavic has a laryngeal is not contested, but reconstructing a root present for the verb instead of a '-ne-' present doesn't make sense, the reference reconstructs PIE *gou̯H-ti-" as ancestor of the infinitive. And giving *gjáuˀti as assumed Balto-Slavic descendant of PIE *gʷéh₁w-ti (shouldn't that be *gʷéh₁u-ti btw?) doesn't work, the change eu > iau only happens later in East Baltic (and the e-grade doesn't work for Prussian).

Well, your remark about the neuter i-stem nouns in Hittite is interesting, I'd need to have a closer look at it first. Exarchus (talk) 07:08, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

About the Hittite terms: from what I can find, 'tuppi' is a loan from Akkadian ṭuppu, while the etymology for 'ḫuwaši' is unknown (that's what I conclude from this paper). So those examples aren't indications that -i was a productive suffix in PIE.

About the question what would be my reconstruction, well firstly I don't claim I know enough about the topic to do reconstructions. I did make the suggestion here of a link to Middle Irish búailid (simply by linking two references to each other). I also think that if I would be able to access all 8 references given by Matasović (whose wording is a bit ambiguous as to whether he thinks it comes from PIE *bʰewd or not), I'd have a clearer picture. Studying where Proto-Celtic neuter nouns on -i tend to come from would also be useful. Exarchus (talk) 13:15, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

Maybe a theoretical possibility (I'm not saying this is likely) would be to say that *boudi is similar to *gʷoni in being a verbal noun from this -dʰe-present that you're positing, but then the verb would have to disappear without a trace. Maybe a similar reasoning could also be used to derive from *bʰewd. If it could be determined what the original meaning of the term is, that would be relevant too. Exarchus (talk) 17:00, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

As for other Iranian misunderstandings: the Old Persian term at *HabiǰáHuti is not an injunctive but an imperfect. And by the way, a bit below you reconstruct *HabiǰaHwišnah, but then the actual forms don't have a long ā. That's one reason not to reconstruct a laryngeal.

And the Khwarezmian term βɣʾw at *gaHwah is an imperative (see the reference). Exarchus (talk) 17:34, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

The expected outcome of PIE *eHu, is indeed Avestan āu. I recommend reading {{R:ae:deVaan:2003|pages=375-380|section=17 Avestan āu}}. Additionally, PIE *eu would yield Middle Perisan ō, whereas PIE *eHu yields MP āw, which is what is seen in the descendants, see {{R:pal:Rezai:2017|44}}.

I am aware of Cheung wrote -- I do cite him on the entry, after all -- but note the question mark of uncertainty he uses beside 𐬔𐬁𐬎𐬱 (gāuš). Starting with PIE *eHu renders the need to explain the long vowel with an s-aorist unnecessary. Cheung is human -- he isn't always right -- and should be scrutinized just as any other academic. For Khwarezmian βɣʾw (/⁠βɣāw⁠/, “an increase; more”), see {{R:xco:FKD|βγʾw|33}}.

I have no strong opinion on how the Balto-Slavic is reconstructed, and I defer to someone like @Sławobóg.

--{{victar|talk}} 06:11, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

Which exact passage do you interpret as de Vaan saying PIE *eHu becomes Avestan āu ? (from what I understand, whether 'H' lengthens the preceding vowel depends on being in the same syllable or not)

As to "PIE *eu would yield Middle Persian ō", I think that's what happened in a form like /abzōn/, but when a vowel follows, it stays /awV/, like in MP /abzaw-/. You apparently missed that (intransitive) verb, see Dictionary of Manichaean Middle Persian and Parthian, p.18.

The descendants with 'āw' can be interpreted as coming from an o-grade (like the causative given by LIV), lengthened by Brugmann's law.

I'm fairly sure the reason Cheung puts a question mark after his analysis of gāuš is because he thinks it could also come from another root, which he gives as *gaHu, given in the LIV addenda as *gʰew- (with gāuš as aorist there). If you want to interpret it as 2sg., you'd have to reinterpret Yasna 32,8.

I can't find what Henning's dictionary says for Khwarezmian, but Rastorgueva & Edelman give something else. (Doesn't seem important for the wider discussion.) Exarchus (talk) 10:20, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

I think you're wrong about laryngeals lengthening a preceding vowel intervocalically. De Vaan does not give PIIr. *aHu as one of the origins of Avestan āu (see also p. 628). Beekes (1988 A grammar of Gatha-Avestan, vol. 1, pp. 89ff.) says the laryngeal was preserved and doesn't mention any lengthening effect.

Could ā here stand for /a/? Is it possible to tell whether gāuš is disyllabic here? —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 12:47, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

Relevant here is also Lubotsky's "Reflexes of intervocalic laryngeals in Sanskrit" which says for example: "In more general terms, we can state that the laryngeal of *-aHi- was lost if there was no morphological pressure to restore it. This probably happened already in Proto-Indo-Iranian"

And the 'Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics' gives "After a vowel and before a consonant (or pause) the laryngeal disappears, causing lengthening of the preceding vowel" (p.489), so not before another vowel. Exarchus (talk) 13:15, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

To answer the question "Could ā here stand for /a/?": /au̯/ would be written as 𐬀𐬊 (ao) (but would actually become 𐬇𐬎 (ə̄u) before š).

If gāuš could have been dissyllabic, I assume it would have been mentioned in Beekes' Intervocalic laryngeal in Gatha-Avestan. But Lubotsky's idea is that even if there originally was a laryngeal, the term wouldn't have been dissyllabic, because of the sequence *-aHV- (a = ă/ā) belonging to the root.

(Just adding that the main sense of gāuš is "cow" (nom.) and in older literature it has been interpreted as such also in Yasna 32,8, or as a gen.sg.) Exarchus (talk) 16:48, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

The classic example cited for PII *aHu is *náHuš (“boat”), which gives us Sanskrit नौ (nau) and Old Persian 𐎴𐎠𐎺 (n-a-v /⁠nāva⁠/) (whence Middle Persian 𐫗𐫀𐫇 (nʾw /⁠nāw⁠/)). If PII *H was lost intervocalically without lengthening the preceding vowel, we would have Sanskrit **no and MP **nō. See {{R:inc:Goto:2013|18}}. --{{victar|talk}} 17:30, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

I don't think that's accurate, see for example what Lubotsky says about Sanskrit naus on page 15. In the noun cases where PIE *u becomes a semivowel, you would of course get long ā, so morphological leveling can explain long ā in the nom.sg. The entry for *néh₂us also says: "The inflection found in Ancient Greek and Sanskrit (*néh₂-u-s ~ *neh₂-w-és) does not correspond to the traditional ablaut patterns of PIE and probably represents a later levelling or reinterpretation."

The Old Persian /nāva/ is apparently a nom.pl., so not a good example. Middle Persian /nāw/ could easily have come from the acc.sg., see here: "nominative, vocative, and accusative coalesced into one endingless case both in the singular and the plural". Exarchus (talk) 18:40, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

(although if *náHum was the PII acc.sg. that last point might not be accurate, but I was thinking of Sanskrit 'nāvam') Exarchus (talk) 19:05, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

That's incorrect. (Cited by who? I don't think anyone supports VH > V̄/_V.) Vedic नौः (nauḥ) is disyllabic and reflects *nau̯us < *naHus, not *nāus. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 19:04, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

Lubotsky in that paper is arguing specifically for PII *aHu > Skt. o / _C, but this change could have occurred at any time between PII and Sanskrit, and by various methods. Also, just to note, many scholars argue that PIE *gʷṓws (“cattle”) should be reconstructed with a laryngeal. --{{victar|talk}} 19:40, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

PII *aHu > o within the root, au at a morpheme boundary. गौः (gáuḥ) doesn't prove VH > V̄/_V either and no one except you would claim that it does. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 20:10, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

"I don't think anyone supports VH > V̄/_V" is wild. Did read the Goto paper I linked? Not even Lubotsky thinks that. And please cite the paper that claims Sanskrit नौः (nauḥ) is pronounced /nau̯us/. --{{victar|talk}} 21:14, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

Goto claims *nā́u̯-s < *náH-u̯-s. u̯ ≠ V.

EWAia, vol. 2, p. 59: “NomSg náuṣ = návu-ṣ”.

This would be yet another excellent time for you to concede a minor point and the sun would rise tomorrow as usual. Instead your flailing. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 21:41, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

I note that de Vaan says about Latin nāvis: "In the oblique case forms, *neh₂u̯V- yielded *nāwV-, whence the long vowel was imported into the nom.acc.sg."

(I don't think Lubotsky exactly implies PII *aHu > au at a morpheme boundary. There are only a few examples for *aHu, his point is clearer when reading the *aHi stuff.) Exarchus (talk) 08:03, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

You're right, *aHu > Skt. au is not a sound law. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 09:03, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

I see the confusion that was happening. I thought you were trying to say that *eHu never resulted in āu, but you weren't including /u̯/, when I was.

It's not clear what Mayrhofer is trying to say there, but he could just be saying that nom.sg. is the result of leveling from the oblique stem, as नउष् (náuṣ) would be pronounced /nɑ́ː.uʂ/, where as नवुष् (návuṣ) would be pronounced /nɐ́.ʋuʂ/.

--{{victar|talk}} 01:15, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

How would something written नउष् (naüṣ) ever have a long /ɑː/ ? You apparently don't understand that navu-ṣ is a reconstructed pronunciation, as these disyllabic 'diphthongs' weren't written down as such. Exarchus (talk) 10:26, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

See the pronunciation of गौस् (gaus). Re:disyllabic, again, see {{R:inc:Goto:2013|18}}. --{{victar|talk}} 15:27, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

You were giving नउष् (naüṣ), not नौष् (nauṣ). And Goto actually derives disyllabic ná-us from *náh₂-u-s < *néh₂-u-s (with 'u' as vowel), so he obviously doesn't think the 'a' is long there. And at least some scholars have posited that there was a glide u̯ in that disyllabic sequence. This paper says about the parallel 'a-i': "After the loss of *i̯, the i in the disyllabic sequence *a-i desyllabified, yielding *-ai̯- and consequently -e- (cf. Lubotsky 1995: 219). Such sequences, however, scan disyllabically in the Rigveda (cf. van Nooten and Holland 1994: iv), which again indicates that *y was present when the hymns were composed."

In any case, as it stands your reconstruction 𐬔𐬁𐬎𐬱 (gāuš) < 2sg.inj.act. *gáHuš still doesn't make sense, also because positing a 2sg. in Yasna 32,8 seems a non-starter. Exarchus (talk) 16:41, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

An error of using {{subst:chars}}, but the point of referencing Goto was that the would have been disyllabically split intervocalically. --{{victar|talk}} 17:11, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

OK (and yes, I think Mayrhofer implies a later leveling took place), that still leaves my other points. Exarchus (talk) 17:52, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

I see you removed 'ta-participle' from 𐬑𐬭𐬀𐬙𐬎𐬔𐬏𐬙𐬋 (xratugūtō) at *ǰáHuti, but then Avestan *gūtə̄ and Proto-Iranian *guHtáh are still wrong.

The sources also seem to reconstruct a thematic verb for Proto-Iranian, rather than a root present: Sims-Williams gives *abi-ǰawa- (in 'Bactrian documents from Northern Afghanistan I', p.173), and Rastorgueva & Edelman give *ǰau̯a- Exarchus (talk) 11:30, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

A few minor points at *HabiǰáHuti (I already said this would get tiresome):

- The pronunciation of Bactrian αβζαοαδo (abzaoado, “to increase, prosper”, 3sg.subj.act.) as /abzāwad/ is very debatable and maybe no transcription should be given as the Bactrian script is frequently ambiguous. If Sims-Williams thinks it comes from *abi-ǰawa-, then he doesn't think the second 'α' was long. Being a subjunctive, it might actually be the third α that's long.

- I see you didn't miss the Middle Persian verb /abzaw-/ after all, but you did miss the Parthian equivalent ʾbgw- /aβγaw-/, while 𐫀𐫁𐫃𐫀𐫇𐫏𐫅 (ʾbgʾwyd /⁠aβɣāwēd⁠/) should be classified alongside the other causatives.

- Why give the alternative transcription /abzūn⁠/ for MP /abzōn/? Exarchus (talk) 19:04, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

How would you reconstruct the Proto-Iranian form ancestral to 𐬑𐬭𐬀𐬙𐬎𐬔𐬏𐬙𐬋 (xratugūtō)? --{{victar|talk}} 21:06, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

I won't pretend it was immediately clear to me, but I figured out it is like the Sanskrit root nouns (with sense of present participle when used in compounds) mentioned by Whitney in §383 f-h, see also Kellens p.115-8.

And that's very important for the reconstruction because if the zero-grade root would have been *guH, like you suppose, then there wouldn't have been a -t added to the root (because there would already have been a final consonant); it would later have become a root noun on -ū. That's why LIV says about *g⁽ʷ⁾ew-: "Aniṭ-Wurzel wegen des Wurzelnomens av. xrutu-gū-t-". Exarchus (talk) 16:41, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

I moved Old Avestan 𐬔𐬁𐬎𐬱 (gāuš) to RC:Proto-Indo-European/gʷeh₁w- as an s-aorist, along with the various Proto-Iranian derivites, and RC:Proto-Iranian/ǰáHuti to RC:Proto-Iranian/ǰáwti to account for *aHu > *aw. --{{victar|talk}} 08:40, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

After the changes made, still some further points:

- 𐬔𐬁𐬎𐬱 (gāuš) should in any case be marked as uncertain as it could also come from another root (given as *gʰew by LIV addenda, but then I suppose the 'g' would also be non-etymological)

- I now think Parthian/MP 𐫀𐫁𐫉𐫇𐫏𐫢𐫗 (ʾbzwyšn /⁠abzawišn⁠/) shouldn't be reconstructed for Proto-Iranian, but is rather a later derivation (because I couldn't find anything about -išn or similar being a productive suffix in Old Iranian). It would be logical if it's a MP derivation from the verb 𐫀𐫁𐫉𐫇𐫏𐫅 (ʾbzwyd), with Parthian borrowing it from MP (because Parthian has a 'ɣ' in its verb).

- I corrected the Bactrian term to αβζoδoφαραυο, but the transcription /⁠aβzūdofarawo⁠/ at *guHtáh is in any case wrong as Bactrian υ means /h/ and final ο is from what I understand either early /ə/, or ∅. Giving the first ο as /ū/ is obviously debatable as Sims-Williams reconstructs *abi-ǰuta-. (I hope it's clear that the long /ū/ in Parthian and Persian can be explained as a regular lengthening of earlier /u/, see for example here at p.7 of pdf. Yes, I've noticed that Hassandoust apparently reconstructs *abi-jūta- but I'd want to know what the further etymology is that he proposes, whether he connects this to زود for example.)

- Most importantly, the interpretation of Avestan 𐬑𐬭𐬀𐬙𐬎𐬔𐬏𐬙𐬋 (xratugūtō) is still wrong. You now seem to suggest that it is a nominative singular, and then at least the case ending would be correct for a ta-participle. But that is simply not what the reference is saying: "NP." means nominative plural (°gūtō is simply an abbreviation of xratugūtō). If Bartholomae would think it's a ta-ptc., he would give xratu-gūta-. As I explained above, the presence of a 't' in this verbal root noun makes the reconstruction of a laryngeal extremely difficult. (And obviously the long /ū/ here can be explained the same way as for 𐬔𐬏𐬥𐬀𐬊𐬙𐬌 (gūnaoti), see de Vaan's Avestan vowels p.310 where both forms are explicitly mentioned.) Exarchus (talk) 07:46, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

By the way, shouldn't *gʷoh₁u-tró-m have resulted in Sanskrit **gautrá because of Brugmann's law? Exarchus (talk) 08:08, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Also, you give Sogdian ɣwnnc as /⁠ɣūnanč⁠/, but Gharib's dictionary gives "γunanc ?" (p.175), so whether there's a long ū there is simply not clear. Exarchus (talk) 09:28, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

@Victar On what basis do you give the transcription /aβɣūcə/ for Khwarezmian عبغوچی (ʾβɣwcy, “additional”) (at *guHtáh) and on what basis do you give this as a past participle? Seems to be another product of your imagination. Exarchus (talk) 07:50, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

You really think I'm going to bother responding to you with comments like "product of your imagination". You're really off the deep end. --{{victar|talk}} 08:07, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Henning says the ending is -cn (-ciñ). Where does he imply the form is nominative plural?

You at least corrected the final vowel. Exarchus (talk) 08:58, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Now I see you already have ʾβɣwcy at *Habiǰáwti, which is way more likely.

The form mβɣwyd given as quotation form for the Khwarezmian verb is rather an imperfect. Exarchus (talk) 12:39, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

I agree with sticking to what the references say, unless there are strong arguments for diverging. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 23:04, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Seconded. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 01:55, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

@Caoimhin ceallach, @Mellohi!, @Victar Given the lack of "strong arguments for diverging", the main question is how to organise the material. LIV reconstructs *g⁽ʷ⁾ew- for Iranian and *g⁽ʷ⁾ewH- for Baltic, but Derksen suggests *gʷeh₃-u- (comparing Ancient Greek βόσκω) for Baltic. I'll also mention that LIV has been critised for reconstructing PIE verbs occurring in only one sub-family (Ringe: "the authors persist in listing items that are attested in only one daughter").

(By the way, a plausible way to link the Baltic and Iranian forms to each other seems to me to simply have *g⁽ʷ⁾ew- and *g⁽ʷ⁾ewH- as alternative forms in PIE.) Exarchus (talk) 18:45, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Multiples author support a laryngeal root for the Iranian forms, and there is too much handwaving required to not to support that assumption, and even more authors support it being related to the Baltic, which demands a laryngeal as well. --{{victar|talk}} 19:24, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Multiple authors? Such as? (those linking Persian افزودن (afzudan) to Sanskrit जू (jū) are obviously a separate category, in any case not supporting your reconstruction)

What does require a lot of handwaving is reconstructing a laryngeal for 𐬑𐬭𐬀𐬙𐬎𐬔𐬏𐬙𐬋 (xratugūtō). Exarchus (talk) 19:43, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

As I cited on the page itself, Griepentrog for one. Yes, please give us an alternative Proto-Iranian reconstruction for 𐬑𐬭𐬀𐬙𐬎𐬔𐬏𐬙𐬋 (xratugūtō). --{{victar|talk}} 19:58, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

I already told you how to interpret it, you are presenting a very 'alternative' interpretation by giving it as a nominative singular, at the same time giving a reference saying it's nominative plural (!). Exarchus (talk) 20:05, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

According to Kellens, it is accusative plural by the way. Exarchus (talk) 20:06, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

No you haven't. You haven't give a single reconstruction. I'm still waiting. --{{victar|talk}} 20:10, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

So you don't know how Indo-Iranian verbal root nouns work? There's a very clear parallel for Avestan *gūt-, namely stūt- from PIE *stew- (or you can give stut- as underlying form as Kellens does) Exarchus (talk) 20:31, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Please do us the honor of enlightening us on verbal root nouns with the steps from Proto-Iranian to 𐬑𐬭𐬀𐬙𐬎𐬔𐬏𐬙𐬋 (xratugūtō). --{{victar|talk}} 20:36, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

I basically already did so above: "zero-grade root", "-t added to the root", and then of course regular lengthening of 'u' in an open initial syllable as mentioned by de Vaan. Exarchus (talk) 21:31, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Still waiting. --{{victar|talk}} 22:29, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

While you're waiting, I'll point out that your reverting of my edit to give lengthened grade for active 3pl s-aorist is again a misinterpretation. Of course I know there's a 'weak' stem for the s-aorist, but this is for the middle voice (and also for active optative, subjunctive and imperative). Kümmel also explains this on page 47: "Allgemeine Regeln für starken und schwachen Stamm bei athematischen Stämmen: stark im Singular des Aktivs (außer 2. Sg. Imperativ), bei Aoristen auch im Dual und Plural (außer 3. Pl. Wurzelaorist)"

See also pages 1918-9 of Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics. Exarchus (talk) 14:22, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Yes, as you just quoted, from Kümmel, "außer 3. Pl. Wurzelaorist", which is why he gives the s-aorist examples in 3sg.s-aor.inj. ~ 3pl.s-aor.inj., "*prā́ć-š- ~ práć-š- ‘fragen’" and *wā́n-s- ~ wán-s- ‘gewinnen’. --{{victar|talk}} 19:41, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Those aren't the 3sg and 3pl, they're the strong and weak stems. Their distribution, as Exarchus said, is given on p. 47. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 20:52, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Page 47 doesn't cover aorists. The aorist section is §5.3.2 starting page 49, and s-aorists are covered under (5). Also note how we decline PIE s-aorists on RC:Proto-Indo-European/dḗyḱst, *dḗyḱst ~ *déyḱsn̥t. --{{victar|talk}} 21:16, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

You are constantly accusing people of not reading things and then you pull stuff like this! §5.3 is three lines long! Exarchus quoted it for you three comments up! Here it is again: "Allgemeine Regeln für starken und schwachen Stamm bei athematischen Stämmen: stark im Singular des Aktivs (außer 2. Sg. Imperativ), bei Aoristen auch im Dual und Plural (außer 3. Pl. Wurzelaorist)". —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 21:40, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

PIE has a different distribution, as I explained in my initial edit commentary. Exarchus (talk) 10:42, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

And as I replied above, the key to that sentence is "stark [..] bei Aoristen auch im Dual und Plural (außer 3. Pl. Wurzelaorist) [strong [..] in aorists as well in the dual and plural (except 3. pl. root aortist)]". --{{victar|talk}} 18:06, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

*Háǰāwšt ~ *Háǰāwšat is an s-aorist, not a root aorist. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 20:30, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

Sigmatic aorists are absolutely a type of root aorist. --{{victar|talk}} 23:37, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

This is really just hilarious. Exarchus (talk) 23:39, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

Are you serious? —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 23:48, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

How about instead of responding with churlish comments, you reply productively. --{{victar|talk}} 07:47, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

I have not seen s-aorists treated as a type of root aorist. Ringe 2006 divides aorists into thematic and athematic, and divides athematic aorists into root-aorists and s-aorists ("From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic", page 29). Regarding the allmorphy in vowel length, Ringe 2006:13 says the long vowel would appear in the indicative singular active of verbs such as *wḗǵʰst "(s)he brought it", and the short elsewhere, as in *weǵʰsn̥d "they hauled it". Does Ringe's description contradict that given by Kümmel?--Urszag (talk) 09:01, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

"Does Ringe's description contradict that given by Kümmel?" An s-aorist is *by definition* not a root aorist. You're taking Victar way too seriously here (although the origin of the s-aorist is of course an interesting topic, but should preferably have its own thread). Exarchus (talk) 09:59, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Additionally, I've seen some papers indicating that it is debated whether the lengthened grade in the s-aorist formation is reconstructable back to PIE. Terje Mathiassen 1969 ("On the problem of lengthened ablaut degree and the slavic sigmatic aorist"), responds to Calvert Watkins's Indo-European Origins of the Celtic Verb (1962), saying that Watkins considers lengthened grade in the sigmatic aorist to have arisen separately in different branches of IE. Bridget Drinka 1990 ("Chronological stratification and the origin of the lengthened grade in the Sanskrit s-aorist") also argues that the lengthened grade seen in Sanskrit is an innovation that does not go back to PIE, but spread by analogy to all three numbers after arising phonetically in the 2nd and 3rd singular active forms of verbs with CaC roots. This seems to be a minority viewpoint, but does anyone know of data that conclusively refutes that position? My first window into this topic was Latin perfect forms such as vē̆xī to vehō, and as far as I know, the evidence of a lengthened grade in such Latin forms isn't very strong.--Urszag (talk) 09:32, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

@Urszag To actually answer your question here: One thing that might question Drinka's claim is that Avestan also has lengthened grade in the active s-aorist according to Introduction to Avestan, p.82. She doesn't talk about Iranian in her paper.

Another objection I'm inclined to think of is that Sanskrit roots with a final vowel also have vriddhi in the s-aorist, but there the thesis that two consonants need to disappear to provoke the lengthening doesn't work. Having those analogically lengthened because that's what other verbs (with root ending on consonant) have, seems rather implausible to me. One would expect to find some attestations like **अजेस् (ajes) instead of अजैस् (ajais) (see Whitney §889). Exarchus (talk) 14:10, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

I want to add that there are actually two 'problematic' forms of जि (ji), namely जेस् (jes) and जेष्म (jeṣma), see Narten's Die sigmatischen Aoriste im Veda, p.119. But they can be explained differently than as relics from a 'non-vriddhied' past of the s-aorist. 'Jeṣma' would rather be a precative (optative with 's' added), see also Mayrhofer. Narten's conclusion is "Es sind also weder jeṣam jeṣma noch jes als irreguläre s-Aor.-Injunktive zu beurteilen." Exarchus (talk) 14:56, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

And then there's the thing that in other cases where two consonants were lost, there was no compensatory lengthening. Quoting Whitney §150: "Thus, tudants becomes tudant, and this tudan; udañc-s becomes udan̄k (142), and this udan̄"

So I don't think this theory should be taken seriously. Exarchus (talk) 07:17, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

I am also waiting btw, till you correct this ridiculous idea that 𐬑𐬭𐬀𐬙𐬎𐬔𐬏𐬙𐬋 (xratugūtō) is a nominative singular. This form was pointed out by LIV as being crucial for the reconstruction, so if you want to do PIE reconstructions yourself, you should obviously know what form it is. Exarchus (talk) 10:47, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

You're deflecting and lashing out. Exarchus pointed out the correct interpretation in LIV quite a while ago. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 21:49, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Asking someone to "show their work" with a reconstruction chain is a basic tenet of linguistics, and I'm not going to be gaslit into thinking it's an unreasonable request. --{{victar|talk}} 22:44, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Actually it is exactly that. You're expecting everyone but yourself to jump through hoops. All the information you need to convince yourself that Iranian doesn't require a laryngeal is on the table. You're just refusing to look at it. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 23:30, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

I have jumped through every hoop, creating sourced entries with detailed dedescent chains in the etymologies, so stop bullshitting. --{{victar|talk}} 05:23, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

I have no issue with the bulk of your work. That's not what this is about. It's about a few mistakes that you refuse to be level on. It is a fallacy to demand that I redo something arbitrary better than you in order to be allowed to point out an error of reasoning. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 13:28, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Do you retype this condescending speech every time, or do you just copy paste it from a document on your computer? --{{victar|talk}} 18:06, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

I have no idea what you're talking about. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 20:31, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

"sourced entries", but regularly misrepresenting the sources:

- giving a nominative singular when source says nominative plural

- giving an athematic root present when source gives thematic present

- 'improving' a reconstruction based on phony sound laws Exarchus (talk) 22:59, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

Again, still waiting. --{{victar|talk}} 08:19, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

So you're saying that you can't figure out that my reconstruction would be "Proto-Iranian *gu-t- > Avestan *gū-t-"? (although one can also give Avestan *gu-t- and say that 'ū' only shows up in open syllables)

For declension see Martínez & de Vaan's Introduction to Avestan p.47 Exarchus (talk) 11:33, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

A full chain of descent, with case endings, yes. For example: PIE *gʷeh₁w- ⇒ *gʷuh₁-tó-s > *guHtás > *guHtáh > Avestan *gūtō ⇒ 𐬑𐬭𐬀𐬙𐬎𐬔𐬏𐬙𐬋 (xratugūtō). --{{victar|talk}} 18:53, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

"with case endings", but you're only giving nominative singular, why aren't you giving the complete declension?

Seriously, can you give me an example of a scholarly publication applying case endings to reconstructions? Maybe it exists, but difficult to find an example.

(The relevant nom.sg. ending for both Avestan and Proto-Ir. is -s, in case this wasn't clear.) Exarchus (talk) 20:10, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

So you can't. Cool. --{{victar|talk}} 01:05, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

A case like this is actually a good example why giving the nom.sg. as citation form isn't always ideal.

Proto-Iranian *gu-t-s would become Avestan *gus because "t is lost before s" (Martínez & de Vaan, Introduction to Avestan, p.27). Exarchus (talk) 06:51, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Yep, which is why we detail ablating patterns in descent chains. Please feel free to do so in your example descent chain. --{{victar|talk}} 07:25, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

For the nom. plural, this would give PIr. *gu-t-ah > Av. *gūtō

And can you now explain to me how 𐬑𐬭𐬀𐬙𐬎𐬔𐬏𐬙𐬋 (xratugūtō) could ever be a nominative singular in Yašt 8,36? Exarchus (talk) 08:07, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Please break down "PIr. *gu-t-ah" for me. How is this derived, in a chain of descent, if you wouldn't mind. And can you explain what "Av. *gūtō" is, a noun, an adjective? --{{victar|talk}} 08:09, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

"Please break down "PIr. *gu-t-ah" for me." This should already have been clear from my previous explanations, but there we go:

- *gu- = zero grade root (the *g, it it comes from PIE, can in principle come from *g, *gʷ, *gʰ or gʷʰ)

- *-t- = a suffix simply there "to make a declinable form" as Whitney gives at §383 g ("i or u or ṛ adds a t to make a declinable form"); it wouldn't have been added if the root would have ended on a consonant (including laryngeal)

- *-ah = nominative plural ending from < PII *as < PIE *es

Avestan nom.sg. *gus (< *gu-t-s) ~ nom.pl. *gūtō would normally have been a noun if used as simplex. But in xratugūtō it is in any case used as adjective, functioning as active present participle. As Whitney gives about Sanskrit at §401: "compound adjectives, having a root as final member, with the value of a present participle, are abundant in every period of the language." Exarchus (talk) 09:34, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Griepentrog reconstructs a laryngeal on the assumption that the Iranian and the Baltic belong to the same root. The question is who claims that the Iranian alone requires a laryngeal? If no one does and if we can't come up with compelling reasons to reconstruct a laryngeal, then we shouldn't do so. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 20:59, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Does Griepentrog really mention Iranian verbs? or is it just about the words for 'cow'? Exarchus (talk) 21:04, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

He mentions Avestan 𐬔𐬏𐬥𐬀𐬊𐬙𐬌 (gūnaoti, “to increase”) and 𐬔𐬀𐬊𐬥𐬀 (gaona, “profit”), but yes, he's primarily interested in finding a root for the word ‘cow’. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 21:22, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Well, based on just those forms it's possible to reconstruct a laryngeal, that's why LIV (which was published later) explicitly mentions the Avestan xratu-gū-t-, otherwise they might have given Iranian also under *g⁽ʷ⁾ewH- Exarchus (talk) 21:27, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Are you demanding citations that don't mention the Baltic forms, because if so, that is absurdly unreasonable. Here are a couple more sources that claim the zero-grade form requires a long vowel, and just to be clear, open *u > *ū is not a feature of Proto-(Indo-)Iranian: {{R:ira:ESIJa|*⁵gau- : gū-|page=228}}{{R:fa:FRZF|head=افزودن|pages=107-108|vol=1}}. --{{victar|talk}} 22:29, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

You're forgetting what this thread is about: "*-eh₁w- is the only form that works for the iranian". That means the presense of a laryngeal needs to be aparent from the Iranian material alone. Rastorgueva doesn't state the source of the lengthening and for Hassandoust you've given the wrong page number. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 01:34, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps in your fervor, you the missed entry I cited, *⁵gau- : gū-. I recommend you have a second look. Hassandoust is also correctly cited. --{{victar|talk}} 05:23, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

No, I didn't miss the entry *⁵gau- : gū-. It's very short and doesn't say anything about the vowel length.

Maybe I have a different edition of Hassandoust. The only version I found has آمآج (āmāj, “purpose”) on pages 107-8. What does it say in your version about the origin of the length? —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 11:54, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

The vowel length is right in the entry header, *⁵gau- : gū-. That section is there to address that certain forms that are attributed to *⁴gau- : gu- would be better explained by a long vowel in the weak stem. Hassandoust supports this, and reconstructs *-ū- in the weak steam as well, see the reference on RC:Proto-Iranian/guHtáh. --{{victar|talk}} 18:06, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

You're forgetting what this thread is about. That there existed a PIE root which would have given PII *guH- is not under discussion. Rastorgujeva & Edelʹman's argument that this root had Iranian reflexes is a semantic one, as far as I can tell. They certainly don't state that you need a laryngeal to explain all the forms. And from what you say it seems to be the case that Hassandoust doesn't either. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 20:22, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

I'd like to know whether Hassandoust really mentions the Avestan forms under افزودن (afzudan). I suspect he may have something else in mind than you do. Exarchus (talk) 22:35, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

Please explain your theory on how *-ū- can arise in Proto-Iranian without a laryngeal. --{{victar|talk}} 08:22, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

I'm not claiming that (at all), but I had the idea that maybe he was linking it to Sanskrit जू (jū) (which is an old theory). But meanwhile I noticed he reconstructs *abi-gāvaya, so nevermind about that idea. I'd still like to know whether he mentions Avestan, and specifically 'xratugūtō'. Exarchus (talk) 09:29, 24 August 2024 (UTC)\

That was a request put to Caoimhin ceallach. --{{victar|talk}} 18:58, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

I haven't the foggiest. How do we know it was long in PII? —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 22:50, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

Yes, see RC:Proto-Iranian/guHtáh, which is why they are making the effort to reconstruct it as such. --{{victar|talk}} 01:08, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

A very important question here is whether Hassandoust also includes the Avestan stuff in his reconstruction. If he doesn't, then my impression is that both with and without laryngeal are viable. Exarchus (talk) 06:24, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps you would like to explain. --{{victar|talk}} 07:25, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

So can I assume Hassandoust doesn't link افزودن (afzudan) to Avestan 𐬔𐬏𐬥𐬀𐬊𐬙𐬌 (gūnaoti) etc. ?

If you think there's a non-Avestan form that necessarily needs a reconstructed laryngeal, then please give an example. Exarchus (talk) 07:42, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Hassandoust does indeed cite Avestan 𐬔𐬏𐬥𐬀𐬊𐬙𐬌 (gūnaoti) as coming from the same root as Persian افزودن (afzudan).

The forms at RC:Proto-Iranian/guHtáh and افزودن (afzudan) both support long *ū (< *uH), independant of the Avestan. --{{victar|talk}} 08:07, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

But does he also give xratugūtō? If he doesn't engage with LIV's argument there, the analysis is simply outdated. Exarchus (talk) 08:33, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Again, it' doesn't have to. Long *ū is supported independently from the Avestan in Iranian. --{{victar|talk}} 08:37, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

I don't think it is, which non-Avestan form can't be explained without laryngeal? Exarchus (talk) 08:44, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Proto-Iranian *ǰaw- ~ *guH- >> Middle Persian [Book Pahlavi needed] (ʾp̄zwtn' /⁠abzūdan⁠/) > Persian افزودن (afzūdan). --{{victar|talk}} 09:32, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

The infinitve in Middle Persian is "either identical with the past stem ('short' infinitives) or identical with the past stem plus -an" (Skjærvø, Middle West Iranian, p.215). So I simply refer you to the sound change given by Korn: "Old Persian [i, u] /_[p, t, k, č] > Middle Persian [ī, ū] /_[b, d, g, z] #".

Infinitives on -یدن (-īdan) and -ودن (-ūdan) (giving Classical Persian transliteration) are very common in Persian, for example ستودن (sitūdan) from *stew-. Exarchus (talk) 10:02, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Of course "open *u > *ū is not a feature of Proto-(Indo-)Iranian", that's for Avestan. See for example Martínez & de Vaan's Introduction to Avestan p.17.

If Rastorgujeva & Edelʹman would have given reasons why LIV's interpretation of 𐬑𐬭𐬀𐬙𐬎𐬔𐬏𐬙𐬋 (xratugūtō) (as indicating no laryngeal) is wrong, then we would have a discussion, but they don't. Exarchus (talk) 14:48, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

I can't find 'LIV' or 'Rix' in their (lengthy) bibliography, so it seems they just missed this.

I'll also mention that they have been criticised by Cheung: "Regrettably, they have ignored any progress in the research of Indo-European linguistics since Julius Pokorny." Exarchus (talk) 15:01, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

@Caoimhin ceallach To come back to "if we can't come up with compelling reasons to reconstruct a laryngeal, then we shouldn't do so." My point is actually that LIV gives a clear reason not to reconstruct a laryngeal for Iranian. That argument has apparently not been contested by anyone.

So again: how should we organise the material? (I'm inclined to think a page for the (Indo-)Iranian root would be useful, to have the root noun derived from it.) Exarchus (talk) 09:08, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

That sounds good to me. My knowledge of Iranian is rudimentary. I defer to you, and to Victar when he isn't overcome by madness. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 10:02, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Even if you allow for two alternative forms with and without a laryngeal, there's still the problem of semantics. Has anyone convincingly bridged that gap? I like Victar's derivation of Proto-Celtic *boudi (“gain”), which would at least put gʷew- “to increase” on firmer footing, but which is probably be hard to maintain given the rarity of neuter i-stems and the lack of support for a dʰe-present. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 22:27, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

"Has anyone convincingly bridged that gap?" Not that I know of, and Derksen might very well be correct in deriving gauti from PIE *gʷeh₃-(u-). In that case, a link to Iranian would get even more difficult as the *gʷ wouldn't palatalise before *eh₃ (is what I understand from this paper). Exarchus (talk) 15:39, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

I see you clarified that Rastorgujeva & Edelʹman divide the Iranian material in two roots, but notice that no one (that I've seen) actually reconstructs an athematic root present.

One thing about R. & E.'s dictionary that looks pretty sloppy is that they give Sogdian prγ'w, βrγ'w at both ⁴gau- and ⁵gau- (with the same reference actually). Exarchus (talk) 11:34, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

I think they argue there's been contamination between *²gau-, *⁴gau-, and *⁵gau-. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 12:23, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

Yes, but giving the same thing twice (with forms and translations inverted) just looks sloppy. Exarchus (talk) 12:30, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

If this entry was moved to *gʷeh₃w-, the palatalization of on the PII could be explained by a laryngeal matathasis to *gʷewh₃-. --{{victar|talk}} 18:18, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

One problem you'd run into with that proposal (besides xratugūtō) would be Sanskrit गोत्र (gotra) + Iranian cognates. With final laryngeal, you'd rather expect **गवित्र (gavitra), like in जनित्र (janitra), धवित्र (dhavitra) and सनित्र (sanitra) (from resp. *ǵenh₁-, *dʰewH- and *senh₂-).

गोत्र (gotra) isn't universally recognised as coming from this root, but it sounds very plausible to me. Exarchus (talk) 18:22, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

I again looked up *boudi and no one reconstructs the Proto-Celtic term as meaning 'gain'. Matasovic gives "booty, victory", which was the original meaning given in the article, until someone changed this. John Koch simply gives "victory". I propose to remove all this speculation about it being related to Lithuanian gauti etc. Exarchus (talk) 19:34, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

Proto-Slavic *vatra ?

The entries for https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vatra#Czech and https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vatra#Serbo-Croatian contain: Inherited from Proto-Slavic *vatra, ultimately from Proto-Iranian *ātr-. The exact route of descent is uncertain, though.

I would like such entries to include more/less than "the route of descent is uncertain" statements. Like why linguists think it's "Proto-Slavic" for start. A premise to be given or some other Slavic examples of v- fronted words that mirror the Proto-Whatever ones w/o v- or why some Slavic languages have the word and some don't (!)

At least start the entry with "The route of descent is uncertain" and pick a root (!) of descent but also modestly warn that it's just a hypothesis you're working with. The lingo used in the entry doesn't convey that

Right now, the way it's expressed, is meaningless(?) yet tries to convey meaning and therein lies the/my problem. I see a lot of such entries having "Proto-Slavic placeholders" in wait for the "exact route of descent", that is links in red fonts leading nowhere. I question this methodology entirely. To be clear, what I question might not be the methodology of linguists, but I sure question the methodology of writing an entry here. Bebe Mușat (talk) 10:47, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

According to the linked reference sources for the Czech entry (in particular, Adams), Slavic forms come from Albanian, and ultimately go to Proto-Indo-European. I'm not sure which of the sources corroborates the Proto-Iranian origin. Given that Albanians and Czech people were never geographically particularly close (to my knowledge), it's curious how this word ends up in Czech from an Albanian source. Chernorizets (talk) 04:26, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

It looks like Trubachev reconstructs a Proto-Slavic form *atra, with the v- prefix as a secondary development: https://www.proto-slavic.ru/dic-trubachev/essja-a/pslf-at.htm. He does note the hypothesis of Albanian origin, but he also argues - based on evidence from more than just Czech and Serbo-Croatian within Slavic languages - that the word is reconstructible as an archaic lexeme in the Proto-Slavic period. If you don't read Russian, you can use Google to translate the rather long explanation for the reconstruction of *atra. Chernorizets (talk) 00:28, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

A lot of people have wrote about vatra, just to mention a few if you are interested. Vasmer 1953, Skok 1973, Vaan 2008, Rix 2001. Check also Zur Etymologie und Wortgeschichte von südslawisch vatra 'Feuer, Herd' if you read German. In Czech context, we got this word from Slovak (Jedlička, 1975; Balhar ad., 1984:205; Sochová, 1991), it is a loanword and it is not attested in Old Czech. Králik (p.650) explained this Slovak word as of Balkan origin (i.e. Carpathism), Paliga (2024) considered Romanian word derived Lat. ātrium and v- prefix due to Thracian influence. It's a long way, the ultimate etymon is still debated. Chihunglu83 (talk) 09:20, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

Sundanese/Old Sundanese seuweu

The word 'seuweu' means 'a child'. Could it be derived from Sanskrit शाव (śāva)? Considering that, so far, I haven't found any potential cognates in Austronesian or Austroasiatic languages (as a loanword), I assume it might come from Sanskrit, given the phonological similarity. What do you think?

Udaradingin (talk) 03:30, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

As far as I know, eu /ɨ/ does not appear in loanwards from Sanskrit. Sanskrit long and short a just become a or occasionally /ə/ in antepunultimate position when the borrowing was mediated through Malay or Javanese. In fact, /ɨ/ does not appear even in borrowings from local languages, except for some very early borrowings from Malay where /ə/ appears nativized as /ɨ/ in Sundanese, as in beurat 'heavy' or the wanderwort beusi.

So I'd say a Sanskrit origin is unlikely, unless you can find other examples of Sanskrit ā/a appearing as eu in Sundanese. Austronesier (talk) 09:04, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/h₃reyH- and supposed *dʰeh₁ extension *h₃reyH-dʰh₁é-ti

I have yet to find any source that derives any of the material (except Latvian raĩdît) under listed in the *h₃reyH-dʰh₁é-ti section at *h₃reyH- from *h₃reyH-. Kroonen even assigns what we list under *h₃reyH-dʰh₁é-ti to an explicitly separate root. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 06:10, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

LIV gives *reydʰ- for those, and Matasović gives *(H)reydʰ-, so I'd rather make a separate lemma and then maybe mention this possibility of a *dʰeh₁ extension (about which I have no opinion how likely that would be). Exarchus (talk) 16:07, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

I am very much in doubt about it. The distribution is local: Celtic, Germanic, Baltic, no Slavic. Verēdus is evidence of borrowing. Librado et al. 2021 ... reject the commonly held association between horseback riding and the massive expansion of Yamnaya steppe pastoralists into Europe around 3000 bc driving the spread of Indo-European languages. ("The origins and spread of domestic horses from the Western Eurasian steppes", Nature 598) and the supplementary discussion does not list the root among horse related terminology and in fact no word for riding. Sluis et al. mention it as a possible pseudo Indo-Europeanism ("European prehistory between Celtic and Germanic", The Indo-European Puzzle Revisited). Kroonen took part in both works.

To separate the derivation from Proto-Indo-European *h₃er- would leave it not a leg a stand on, but the initial *H is really not justified by the limited evidence. Some have questioned initial PIE *r. We have many entries for *Hr and only three for *r, one imitative, the other two probably borrowed, excluding for example *ret- in favor of *Hreth₂-, which has merged with *kret- in EWAhd: "rad²". Alisheva (talk) 21:52, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Tow Rag

Made an account just because this page is the first thing that comes up when I search for tow-rag https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/toe_rag. Funnily enough I stumbled upon this after a moment of clarity in the shower when I asked myself how sailors in napoleonic times washed their bums, I know, riveting stuff. Anyhow, since I'm not British, am very new to wikipedia and nobody has caught onto it yet, I thought I'd might aswell start a discussion on it. Can anyone help me find some sources so I can add it to the page? All I can find is this https://www.oldsaltblog.com/2020/03/tow-rags-or-how-sailors-cleaned-their-bums/ that claims it to be the origin of the word but it doesn't seem very "scientific" to me.

In modern British slang, a tow-rag, also spelled toerag, is a low-life, scum, or loser. Recently an elderly constituent’s comments on Prime Minister Boris Johnson went viral when she referred to him as a “filthy piece of toerag.” Toerag is not slang used widely on this side of the Atlantic, although it translates nicely into American English as the equally impolite “ass-wipe.” 

VB-Karnak (talk) 02:02, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) a toe-rag is literally a rag you could wrap your feet in if you didn't have any socks. Its oldest citation is from a work called Experiences of a convict by a certain J. F. Mortlock: “Stockings being unknown, some luxurious men wrapped round their feet a piece of old shirting, called, in language more expressive than elegant, a ‘toe-rag’.” There is no indication that they used these to wipe their bums, although it is possible—you need to use something after all. Whatever the case may be, we don't need this in order to explain either the shape of the word or the secondary meaning “tramp; low-life”. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 19:31, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Tagalog dangal and bunyi

@Austronesier, you mentioned that Tagalog dangal (“fame, honor, reputation”) shouldn't be treated as a borrowing from dengar (“hear”) because there is no modern Malay varieties that colexify 'hear' and 'reputation'. However, Tagalog dangal does show a phonological pattern that is typically found in loans from Malay, which is different from the one that is found in native Tagalog words that follow regular sound change from earlier proto-forms.

Can you explain how Tagalog bunyi (which you said is a borrowing from Malay bunyi) semantically developed from 'sound' to 'fame'/'honor'? As far as I know, there are no known modern Malay varieties that colexify 'sound' and 'fame'/'honor', yet you said it's the source of Tagalog bunyi. And how is the semantic change in bunyi different from that of dangal?

Also, is it possible that Tagalog dangal, which @Ysrael214 said might be derived from Proto-Austronesian *dəŋəʀ (“to hear, sound”) according to David Zorc, did actually come from *dəŋəʀ via a Southern Luzon language that borrowed it from dengar? Aprihani (talk) 09:12, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

Etymology of פֿליִען

The page for Proto-West Germanic *fleugan says that פֿליִען (flien) is inherited from Middle High German vliegen and Old High German fliogan. Problem then is, what happened to the -g- in the middle? Wouldn't it be more appropriate to say that פֿליִען (flien) comes from a merger/confusion of Middle High German vliehen and Middle High German vliegen? Since the infinitive form doesn't have the -g- which would cause it to be closer to Middle High German vliehen, but there's also the past participle געפֿלויגן (gefloygn) (as opposed to *געפֿלויען (*gefloyen)) which corresponds to German geflogen. On the topic of German, there's also German fliehen which can also mean "to fly".

And before anyone mentions Luxembourgish fléien, I don't know Luxembourgish that well, but as far as I'm concerned, the loss of -g- after a long vowel or diphthong is not uncommon in Luxembourgish, whereas it's almost unheard of in Yiddish. Anyways, should I add פֿליִען (flien) to the list of descendants of Old High German fliohan? Insaneguy1083 (talk) 14:31, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

pína

Old Norse, RFV of the etymology. I'm not sure why this explanation makes more sense than common inheritance from PGmc. — Ganjabarah (talk) 00:55, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Initial p- is very rare, overall, and is almost always borrowed from somewhere, I believe. I believe there are a few words believed to be such early borrowings as they've changed from p- to f-, just like native words. Wakuran (talk) 01:14, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Old Norse pína is ultimately a borrowing of Latin pēna that was borrowed into West Germanic, then into Old Norse. Old English or Old Low German (Old Saxon) were the likely vehicles. Leasnam (talk) 02:16, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, it makes sense. I wasn't considering how much rarer direct borrowings from Latin into Proto-Germanic are, compared to ones that go through PWG into Old Norse, which seems like a pretty default process (to the extent that it's sometimes assumed without any real evidence that would distinguish the two scenarios :p—in this case, though, the PWG denominal seems sensible enough). Still, the entry needs references. — Ganjabarah (talk) 05:09, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Why did Late Latin ē yield ī in Germanic languages? Proto-Germanic had a close and an open long front vowel. The latter is transscribed *ē₁ or *æ­­­̄. This was lowered in Proto-West Germanic. Can we use this as evidence for the timing of the borrowing, if LL ē was considered more like /iː/ than /aː/? Are there other borrowings we can compare this to? —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 12:22, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

kamala

@Einstein2 suspects the existing etymology. See WT:RFVE#kamala. I have an intuition that this entry might have a fairly high level of pageviews, so getting rid of error or spurious certainty might be a good idea. DCDuring (talk) 21:26, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

raa'annokka

The article for the Finnish word raa’annokka currently lists it as a compound word of raaka (“yard”) and nokka. The latter is startling to me, since it implies a non-Germanic origin. Compare Swedish rånock, German Rahnock. Surely, these are cognates? Otherwise, it would be an amazing coincidence. Are there sources on the origin of raa’annokka? Gabbe (talk) 03:03, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

raaka (“yard”) is an old Germanic borrowing, anyway, so maybe a Low German word would have been conflated with older words. Wakuran (talk) 12:07, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

The word is simply a transparent compound raa'an + nokka, so the question you should be asking is if nokka was phonosemantically matched with what it means on the Germanic side (quite plausible). The similarity per se has been noted in standard etymological dictionaries and might be worth a comment on the main entry or perhaps already at Proto-Finnic *nokka. --Tropylium (talk) 21:32, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

peter, peter out

Consider this a combo RFE and RFM/RFC:

• I notice we list peter out in two places, once at peter out, and once at peter with "chiefly with 'out'". I would suggest lemmatizing peter and redirecting peter out because something can also google books:"peter off"/google books:"petered off", have google books:"petered down", etc.
• We speculate that peter "trail off" may be derived from peter "to stop (doing or saying something)", a definition we don't list, and which only raises the question: fine, where'd that come from?

- -sche (discuss) 17:12, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Green's has an entry for the "to stop" sense, but is similarly unsure as to its etymology. Einstein2 (talk) 22:35, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

@-sche: OED suggests that peter meaning "to stop (doing or saying something)" is derived from Saint Peter, and asks readers to compare the following slang senses of Peter (also peter): "(1) (originally cant) portmanteau, trunk, piece of baggage; parcel; (2) cash box; safe; cash register, till; (3) (originally Australia) cell in a police station or prison, lock-up". OED suggests these allude to Saint Peter as the holder of the keys of the kingdom, or senses 2 and 3 may be a pun on the etymological meaning of Peter as "stone" (not clear to me why). I don't really see the connection between stopping the doing or saying of something and these slang senses, though. — Sgconlaw (talk) 18:30, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Oh! I wonder if the sense may allude to Peter's denial of Jesus? This isn't specifically mentioned in the OED, though. — Sgconlaw (talk) 18:33, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps there’s a connection between ‘peter out’ and ‘die out’, referencing St Peter holding the keys to the pearly gates? Overlordnat1 (talk) 19:17, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

@Overlordnat1: the OED doesn’t link that sense of peter to Saint Peter. It suggests the etymology currently in our entry. — Sgconlaw (talk) 05:34, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

phumdi

What's the ety? (The one present lacks native script and glosses...) - -sche (discuss) 22:26, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

I also wonder about athapum phumdi. What is an athapum? Where did this word comes from? Tollef Salemann (talk) 22:48, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

dubious cognates of ἐλαύνω, supposedly from *h₁elh₂-

The entry has a list of potential cognates, but no references for any of them. I would question in particular Latin alacer: it's not clear to me that there's any regular way to get Latin word-initial al- from a root with the form *h₁elh₂-. The e-grade and o-grade wouldn't do it. The outcome of zero-grade *h₁l̥h₂- is less obvious I guess: Schrijver 1991:314 argues that, even though we could theoretically imagine *HRHC- becoming RaC-, Rāc-, aRaC-, or aRC- in Latin, there is no reliable evidence supporting any of these outcomes other than RaC-. Schrijver also argues that this is the regular outcome of *HRHC- in Germanic, but maybe *alaną could be derived from o-grade *h₁olh₂-. Anyway, I'm inclined to remove the supposed connection to alacer from both entries, but can anyone evaluate whether the other proposed cognates are just as dubious and apparently unsupported by linguistic literature? Urszag (talk) 08:10, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

The phrasing "From Proto-Indo-European ..., albeit with no certain cognates" sounds somewhat oxymoronical, though. Wakuran (talk) 11:34, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Apparently in Latin a sequence *HCC can develop > *HəCC > aCC. This is from {{R:la:OHCGL|ed=2|page=55|section=fn. 9}}, but what he says doesn't entirely make sense and he misreferences Hackstein, so I can't find more information about it. Maybe someone else knows more. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 11:58, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

kirta

A word used in the vicinity of Lake Chad: any idea what the ety is? - -sche (discuss) 17:27, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Based on this, likely borrowed from Kanuri kə́rtá. Einstein2 (talk) 19:33, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! With that tip I was able to find a (French) reference work making the connection. - -sche (discuss) 22:26, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Senonian

OED has the etymology of this word as I've transposed onto our entry but just Latin -> French -> English feels wrong, any ideas of any intermediaries? Akaibu (talk) 18:45, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

@Akaibu: scientific terminology is mostly learned borrowing. As such, no intermediaries are needed. A scientist writes about a new concept in French, and uses a Latin term from some book as the name for it. Scientists (perhaps including the scientist who wrote the French article) write about that concept in English and voilà! the name is now an English word. Chuck Entz (talk) 20:17, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

The semantic shift from "Gaulish tribe" to "Cretateous epoch" is baffling, though, but maybe I just misunderstand something. Wakuran (talk) 23:16, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

Someone on ResearchGate says "Senonian is not used anymore as a stratigraphical unit. It was based on a stratotype near Sens in France. The international commission on stratigraphy considered it had to be subdivided ... and forgotten." (Marc Philippe)--Urszag (talk) 00:59, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

Likewise, Wikipédia says " Son stratotype est caractérisé par la craie blanche de Sens ... Cette division a été créée en 1842 par Alcide d'Orbigny. Elle tire son nom du peuple des Sénons qui a habité la région de Sens dans l'Yonne (France)"--Urszag (talk) 01:03, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

תלי

Klein gives cognate to Aramaic אתליא and Akkadian attalu, but what are these words? Where are they from?Tollef Salemann (talk) 22:26, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

@Tollef Salemann: It is rather from the same verb or root as the homonymous term for “quiver” you already have etymologized, “to hang”, for the dragon or snake was imagined as the axis mundi on which the world hangs – Polschlange.

The Akkadian term supposedly equivalent to eclipsis is transcribed according to modern standards – that were fluid in Assyriology when that etymology was already around – as attalû, antalû. Fay Freak (talk) 23:26, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

Right, I found "Neo-Assyrian" an-ta-lu₃, meaning eclipse. But what in the whole world is Aramaic Atalia? Tollef Salemann (talk) 07:38, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

A dragon making solar eclipsis isn't surprising to find in any mythology outside Australia, but is it so obvious that Teli is a dragon at all? It may be just a Medieval misinterpretation. Tollef Salemann (talk) 07:44, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

Ephelota

The protist Ephelota is the type genus of the family Ephelotidae. I can't find its etymology. Any ideas? Thanks. Gerardgiraud (talk) 05:53, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

అదృశ్యత

No etymology given, but it's clearly from Indic, as I recognise a- meaning un- and dr̥ś- meaning see. Is it borrowed wholesale or derived from अदृश्य? PierreAbbat (talk) 05:59, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

@PierreAbbat DCS has one attestation of Sanskrit अदृश्यता (adṛśyatā), so I'd be inclined to give it as borrowed from that. Exarchus (talk) 09:55, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Membrillo / marmelo (quince)

The usual etymology given is melimēlum (“sweet apple”), but there are several issues with this, the first of wich is that quince is one of the most bitter fruits you'll ever taste, so it seems a bit weird that the word for it originally meant 'sweet apple'. The other issue is on phonetic grounds: Gallician/Portuguese marmelo (with [ɛl]), asturian 'marmiellu' and castillian membrillo point to a final -ĕllu, with a short 'e' and long 'l'. While doing some 'reverse engineering' on these words I realised the ending is the same for the word 'yellow' (amarelo / amariellu / amarillo), and a much more plausible etymology would be Proto-West-Iberian *malu amarellu / melu amarellu (yellow apple). What are your thoughts? Sérgio R R Santos (talk) 01:04, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

The derivation from melimēlum does seem problematic in terms of form, and while the semantics seem similar, I agree there's some discrepancy. However, it doesn't seem entirely straightforward either to start from a form like malamarɛllu or melamarɛllu. For Portuguese, I think the expected outcome would be something like mamarelo, for Spanish malamarillo or melamarillo. I think intertonic -a- was not regularly lost in either language. Since -ɛllu was a common ending for Late Latin/early Romance diminutives, we could attempt to reconcile the etymology from melimēlum with sound laws by supposing that it was analogically replaced by *melimellum.--Urszag (talk) 01:25, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

My thinking was that Spanish ''membrillo'' comes from an earlier *memriello from earlier * melmriello, with the "l" lost before the consonant cluster (as in balneum), and then "mr" becoming "mbr", wich is regular, while gl/pt "marmelo" and ast. "marmiellu" comes from *malmrello > marmello. I know it would be unusual for 'a' to be ellided, but there are modern variants for the asturian/leonese word for 'yellow' without the inicial 'a'. Just a thought.

One final word for one of the original greek meanings of an apple grafted to a quince: it would make no difference on the taste; the quince rootstock is very hardy ant tolerant of drought, and that would be the main reason for grafting. Sérgio R R Santos (talk) 01:53, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

This might not have any bearing, but the Iberian root for "yellow" is a diminutive of bitter (amarus), to begin with, so I wonder if that might have played any part. Wakuran (talk) 10:04, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that thought indeed crossed my mind. Sérgio R R Santos (talk) 16:34, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

The ending can very easily have been remodelled into the diminutive -ĕllum. Indeed, a malomellum is attested in Isidore per Coromines & Pascual (Me–Re, p. 32). I'd recommend consulting this source for the other etymologies below as well. Nicodene (talk) 22:10, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

That still doesn't expain the sequence "mbr" in castillian, and the huge semantic shift, although, since quinces are mostly used to make quince jam (marmelada), whis is sweet, that could explain it, but i'm still not convinced. Regarding "the other etymologies below" are you reffering to the topics that I started about "romã" and "luva"? Can you kindly provide me a link? - I'm not in a situation where I could physicaly acquire the book. Also, one last note: experts can be wrong, that's why I started these topics, so that we can have a conversation beyond what is generally accepted regarding etymologies. Sérgio R R Santos (talk) 18:50, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

@Sérgio R R Santos: For such widely used books, there are go-to sources which “official” teachers also don’t tell you about. But Nicodene is right that Coromines & Pascual is satisfyingly verbose about membrillo, not about romã not found in Castilian. For the semantics of membrillo it provides evidence from antiquity that to get rid of the quince’s bitterness one cooked it in honey. Fay Freak (talk) 19:31, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

The source discusses all of that and more.

One can download any volume of Coromines & Pascual for free on Libgen.

You’re free to engage in amateur speculation anyway, but a glance at the accumulated scholarship wouldn’t hurt. Nicodene (talk) 17:38, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

I am much appreciated for that, and I will definitely check that out, but I feel some of you have an automatic tendence to defer towards the scholar's opinions. I'm not questioning all the hard work they've done, but sometimes even the experts can be wrong; in this particular example I just can't go past that sequence -mbr- in Spanish, or the vast semantic shift; even harder for me to swallow is that romã came from a hypotetical word unparalleled in any neighbouring language and it looking exactly like the arabic word just being a massive coincidence. Another glaring example of this is that Portuguese diccionaries apparently can't decide on the etymology of osga, either giving it as "obscure" or "controversial", when it is patently obvious that it came from Arabic وَزَغَة (wazaḡa) - Arabic wa- regularly becoming Portuguese o-, as opposed to Spanish gua- (just compare the Spanish name for the Guadiana river with the older Portuguese form Odiana, or all the placenames in Algarve that start with Od-, from Arabic wad-). Now, I find it acceptable not knowing that etymology in the old days, before the Internet, but in the year of 2024 is totally unacceptable. Regarding engaging in amateur speculation, well, isn't that the whole raison d'être for this place? Everybody in here is engaging in amateur speculation, or at least as a hobby, and it is the job of any racional human being to question the wisdom of their ancesters, and not just accept it, if it doesn't make sense to them. And i'm not gonna lie, it is a bit demotivating not finding that many people who agree with me, but the best I can do is to use what seem to me the most racional arguments that I can in trying to fight some conventional wisdoms, in the hope of finally bringing someone to my side. See you next time. Sérgio R R Santos (talk) 18:28, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

It is also the “job” of anyone coming up with a theory to actually look at what relevant data is available, for example by consulting a useful compilation like Coromines & Pascual. If you want to write a critique of the latter's argument(s), after actually reading them, then that would be something worth engaging with. Nicodene (talk) 22:35, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

That's a fair point, but like i said before, linguistics is not rocket science. Everytime i challenge a currently accepted etymology you act like i'm challenging Einstein's theory of relativity, and for you to even bother to consider my arguments you expect me to come with a new mathematical model to explain the workings of the universe. If you wanna accept all the opinions of the scholars you study without questioning be my guest; I have a different view on it, but anyway, i feel we're beating a dead horse, we've both made our claims and lets move on from it. I preffer the view of Max Planck on this: "science advances one funeral at a time" Sérgio R R Santos (talk) 11:01, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

No, I expect anyone trying to come with a new theory to actually spend a bit of time reviewing the relevant data, especially when it is conveniently cited for them. That’s how scientific research works. This shouldn’t be a difficult concept to understand.

I have had no problem whatsoever going against sources, including this one, in cases where they missed something important or arrived at a conclusion that seems unwarranted from the data. If you believe that’s the case here, then make a case for it. Nicodene (talk) 17:30, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

lol, you keep changing your comments in the middle of my reply, forcing me to start over!

"If you believe that’s the case here, then make a case for it" - what do you mean, I already made my case in all the topics I started. You just decide to ignore my arguments and defer to authority, saying; "well these scholars already debated this issue and came to a diferent conclusion than you". Well, thank you very much for that information; like I said before, the whole reason this space exists is to discuss etymologies, and honestly i'm getting a bit of tired this back and fourth where I lay out my arguments and you just completely ignore them and just cite sources. Stay well. Sérgio R R Santos (talk) 17:48, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

If you want me to dissect your amateurish (attempts at an) argument, as in the previous discussion, I certainly can. The price of admission is your spending two minutes actually reading the cited source and accounting for the information that it presents. Something that you could have done multiple times already with the time you've spent writing out useless complaints.

It's not “defer[ring] to authority” to ask that someone actually look at relevant data. Nicodene (talk) 18:19, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

You're really starting to get on my nerves with your arrogance and lack of respect - are you perhaps related to @Fenakhay ? Because, that jerk has a similar modus operandi as you, (although, in his case he's so far out I think he might actualy have mental problems):

everytime I try to engage with arguments you never adress them (like you did again in this last post) and defer to whatever linguistics god you believe in, sprikled with occasional insults to my intelligence; in this thread you replied 5 times: in the first one you did indeed provide a counter-argument to mine, all the others was to mention sources. I dont give a shit about what your sources have to say, ok?

If you're not gonna bother to addres my arguments, please stop replying. Have a nice day. Sérgio R R Santos (talk) 18:51, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

So you prefer to write out more useless complaints instead of actually spending two minutes (or even two seconds) reading relevant information. That is not surprising considering the way this has gone so far.

I know you've not even spent “two seconds” reading because the very first sentence in Coromines & Pascual points out the existence of a Latin melomĕli meaning “quince syrup”. So much for the “huge semantic shift”. Nicodene (talk) 18:55, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Well at least you presented an argument, thank you for that. It still doesn't explain the phonetic evolution of the Castillian term (which was my main argument), unless you prefer to believe that it is the result of irregular development - which is a possibility, after all there is always some irregular or difficult to explain phonetic changes in the evolution of languages.

Listen, you prefer the oficial theory, which is what makes more sense to you, and I prefer mine, which makes more sense to me - and I think there are valid arguments and counter-arguments to both sides, but there's no point in us keep bickering about this subject anymore; none of us is gonna change the other's mind anyway. But I'm sure we'll meet again. I've been wanting to reply to you on caixa but i have been too lazy, and have being busy working on Coptic witkionary. Sérgio R R Santos (talk) 19:26, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Information relevant to the development of /mbɾ/ is also available there. You have indeed been “too lazy”, and that - when combined with your being uninformed - makes talking to you a complete waste of time. I don't know why I bother. Nicodene (talk) 19:35, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

I know why you bother. You get a kick out of feeling superior to other people in the internet because in real life no one would ever endure to have a conversation with you because of your unbearable condescending attitude. Sérgio R R Santos (talk) 19:44, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Speaking of arrogance, you do remember the part where I cited a basic reference manual at the beginning of this conversation, you kept refusing to even look at it, and then you went on a rant about how you're some kind of Galileo amongst a herd of blind sheep, and how the scientific understanding of this etymology won't progress until ignoramuses who disagree with you die of old age? Nicodene (talk) 19:47, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

You're funny, i know your type. Let me begin by saying that I have wonderfull news for you: I did finally consult Coromines and saw his explanation for the metastisis: it sounds preposterous. Also, you could've just write them yourself, instead of keeping pestering me for what it seems like a month for me to consult the goddamn thing.

"and then you went on a rant about how you're some kind of Galileo amongst a herd of blind sheep" - if this is what you got from what i wrote it makes me believe that you have some understanding issues, which would explain a lot about our interactions. Seriously, how do you get by in real life? i'm sure you can't expose this part of your pesonality to people, otherwise no one wold bear to put up with you. Anyway, stay clinging to the opinions -and they are opinions- of your long dead Masters. Sérgio R R Santos (talk) 20:09, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

That is exactly the attitude your comments convey, including this one with its “clinging to the opinions … of your long dead Masters” nonsense.

I've already told you: “I have had no problem whatsoever going against sources, including this one, in cases where they missed something important or arrived at a conclusion that seems unwarranted from the data.” You have failed to actually argue that this happened here. “It sounds preposterous” is not even remotely an argument. Nicodene (talk) 20:29, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

I don't like the tone of this conversation.

While we are on the topic and without intent to aggrevate, since @Caoimhin_ceallach has asked for correspong Latin /ē/ Germanic /ī/, I have to point out that mirabelle plum is missing an etymology. The comparison would support @Sergio's hypothesis in one part, not so much in the other. But wait, there's more where that came from. Alisheva (talk) 17:38, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Romã (pomegranate)

Now, when you look at it it seems obvious that it came from Arabic رُمَّان • (rummān); however the "official" etymology given in most sources is the unattested and unparallelled in any neighbouring language "(mala) romana" - roman apple.

My arguments against that etymology and for the arabic one are the following:

- Whenever Portuguese and Spanish have different names for things, and the spanish one comes from latin, the portuguese one usually comes from arabic, having it self replaced the portuguesed latin-derived term, if there was one. Examples: alface/lechuga, tâmara/dátil, alecrim/romero, alforreca/medusa, osga/salamanquesa, alfaiate/sastre, just to name the ones i can think of at the moment, where the first one of every pair is the Arabic-derived Portuguese word, while the second is the Spanish one.

- The variation of the name of the tree, which in "standard" portuguese is 'romãzeira", but in my dialect is 'romaneira'. The expected form should be 'romeira' (compare avelã - aveleira) which is indeed attested in dictionaries but i've never heard anyone using it in real life.

One counter-argument, i guess, would be that arabic final -an would become -ã in Old Galician and eventualy -ão in portuguese which would yield the final form *romão; however, my counter-argument would be that the arabic word has a long "a" (rummān), which would become a long nasal vowel in old galician; the convention of writing Old Gl. words comming from latin -ana, -ono as -ãa, -õo is a modern one; such words were often spelled with two tildes (like in 'bõõ'), which makes me think they may have been pronounced as long nasal vowels.

Let me know your thoughts. Sérgio R R Santos (talk) 16:33, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

The Arabic etymology sounds plausible. It is mentioned on Portuguese Wikipedia with a few citations.--Urszag (talk) 16:43, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Holy shit, the wikipedia article does talk about my concerns about the etymology, even one that i forgot to add, which is calling it "roman apple" when the pomegranate was, if i'm not mistaken, introduced in westen Europe by the Phoenicians, way before the Romans arrived.

I just wanted to start this discussion because currently in wiktionary only the "mala romana" etymology is given, the possibility of the Arabic one not even being mentioned, even though it was in older versions of the page. And honestly if you hadn't brought up the Wikipedia page I would probably never be aware of it, as, despite being Portuguese, I mostly use english wikipedia. Sérgio R R Santos (talk) 17:01, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

The Roman etymology was added by TheWikipedian1250 on 26 July 2022‎ and then made the only one by Sarilho1 (talk • contribs) on 21 August 2022‎, why? They obviously fell for a fake.

The references impressing a Wikipedian have to be checked for the etyma they mention: Whether and how they are attested, and if they are reconstructed what descendants and derivations support this reconstruction by which linguistic rules. As Wiktionary is a secondary source. Like this month somebody got baited by Soviet sources to derive the name of an Armenian term internally in Armenian by a term that does not exist in Armenian, with endings that do not exist, and the referenced Coptic etymology at ⲃⲉϩⲱⲗ (behōl, “date palm”) stated it to be from Proto-Semitic *balaḥ- only because of one Arabic word: we have to synthesize our own story. I have explained at multiple occasions that printed dictionaries have incentives to make up things. After knowing this, Wiktionary editors are sufficiently critical in filling etymologies. Wikipedia editors aren’t by design.

For this particularly word, I also point out that the name of a kind of scales, steelyard, yet to create for Romance languages on Wiktionary, is also everywhere around misetymologized as “Roman” when the term represents just another particular meaning of رُمّان (rummān, “counterpoise”), which Romanists could not find in any Arabic dictionary they would get in their hands, just in a few particular journal pieces, perhaps in languages they don’t understand. Fay Freak (talk) 17:25, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

I'll probably change the page to include the two etymologies again, linking to this page for the pros and cons of each etymology. Sérgio R R Santos (talk) 18:06, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Is the Latin etymon attested anywhere? If not, it is certain that the etymology is just wrong. If yes, then it is still likely modelled after Portuguese. Similarities for so specific phytonyms, as the pomegranate in Arabic and Portuguese, just being accidental, needs backing from linguistic reality.

You can of course make specific mention of the “Roman” etymology as not backed by anything, apparently our language students just need such explicit reasonings for their judgments, you are right, I have exercised myself all the time in verbalizing them to Wiktionary.

Doesn’t need that you have to pretend that you have not made any judgment or editorial decision yourself. Likelihoods are objective, and not counting references in support of one few or the other, as Wikipedians do (themselves inconsistently, partially sorting them by reliability, and still choosing what they include and reference). Fay Freak (talk) 20:29, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Even though i mostly agree with you, i think that the highly unlikely etymology of *mala romana still should be kept, since it ts mentioned in several "professional" sources and dictionaries, and i fundamentally agree with wikipedia's policy of no original research; so, even though the arabic source seems very obvious and the latin one extremely unlikely - not because it's unattested, but because it has no parallel in any neighbouring language (many words are unattested but have paralles in several languages, like caralho/carajo/carall) - the reality is that there's a large consensus among Portuguese linguists (most of who are not very bright, i might add) regarding that etymology, and if i just removed it and just left the one i think is correct i would basically be doing the equivalent of original research; i'm just an amateur with an intrest in linguistics, i dont have a degree and havnt published anything. Anyway, that's why i started this topic (and the one above) before i made any changes to that page, and because i apparently have to be on my best behaviour because i have recently been warned about being a bit rude, (which i disagree with), so in the end it's a good thing that the Etymology Scriptorium exists; it seems to me a very helpful tool in Wiktionary. Sérgio R R Santos (talk) 21:32, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Another counter-argument could be that rummān is the collective, and the singulative is rummāna, which would be a more likely source. My counter-argument would be that the word may have been borrowed from a Mozarabic variety, or a late borrowing from Arabic; the fact that only Portuguese has this word, and not Galician, could point to a later Arabic/Mozarabic borrowing. Sérgio R R Santos (talk) 21:15, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

The collective is the unmarked form. I think you overrate formal matters, when arbitrariness and boldness is also a principle of language, as well as inexactitude, if only caused by forgetfulness and confusion, psychological factors historical linguists are bad at discerning and describing. People try to make sense first, the grammatician is last and within limits optional, if they can make enticing connections and get away with it. They flush things they have in their mind, so the reconstructionist has to expand upon why it is likely that a certain thing happened in the past minds. If one learnt a little bit of Arabic as for agriculture, then such a Portuguese speaker will save both the collective and the singulative in his mind, and freely change them even in Portuguese, or back-form; anyhow learning any language foreign and native in the Middle Ages was more disorganized than the armchair scholar admits. Which non-academic borrowing processes have you actually observed? Can you imagine them? It could have been an Arab pointing at a tree and enunciating its name rummān, which then a Romanceman memorized and used in his language, without general understanding of the opposite language in either party. Many good options behind the statement that romã is from رُمَّان (rummān). Fay Freak (talk) 19:49, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Appendix:Snowclones/X does not a Y make

The entry at Appendix:Snowclones/X does not a Y make describes this word order as first arising in 1921, with snowclones appearing thereafter.

However, we have the poem "w:To Althea, from Prison" from 1642, with the line "Stone walls doe not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage;" that points to a much earlier origin for this construction.

Do we have any lexicographic reason for ignoring the 1642 instance, in preference for the 1921 one? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 22:24, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

• It is clear from the context in the entry that 1921 refers to a translation of Aristotlean text. It is believed that this would be significant enough to give the phrase currency. Direct influence from one much earlier poem is unlikely. A cursory glance at the freedictionary idioms delivers no reliable lexicographical reference, for what its worth.
• The earlier history of the word order is not irrelevant to the etymology but is it really etymology when the archaising style readily suggests that the syntax was at one point purely grammatical? Yes, I argue in support of the question, because the etymology of not in contraction of nāwiht (NEG + PRON) is highly inconclusive to me.

The Lovelace quotation rather reminds me of a different phrasism, i.e. ... what prison does to a man. Although the sense of make which I have in mind is infered from German machen, it should be noted that essentially the same snowclone exists in other languages like it as well. Word order can be meaningful. If the meaning is questionable, examples would be difficult to find because it is not clear what to look for. Between Dutch nog geen, Swedish ingen and Greek οὐ (ou), I refer to my Low German friend to whom ja nu och keen is native (I can find at least 3 hits for "ja nu[n] auch kein" in a websearch).

• IP added the quote to the etymology of one swallow does not a summer make some time ago. See there for more. It seems plausible that it imitates the original Greek word order and that Lovelace has snowcloned it, requiring an earlier translation of the Greek and a matching Greek word order. I don't know how likely that is. 16th century is simply the cut off date for most Goofle books. Alisheva (talk) 21:21, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

Vermilion

We are told that vermilion derives from vermis (worm), which it undoubtedly does. But then we are told that this is because the colour was extracted from w:Kermes vermilio, a most un-wormlike scale insect which was only named by Planchon in 1864. It seems obvious the the name arose simply because worms generally have a reddish colour! We are told that Kermes derives from Proto-Indo-Iranian *kŕ̥miš (worm), but the reason would be the same - the colour! 24.108.0.44 01:03, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/wr̥mis lists a Proto-Indo-European root with descendants in seven-eight different sub-families. I think the connection to the color is only found in Latin. Wakuran (talk) 11:08, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Or would you mean that the color word originated as something meaning "worm-like", rather than the word for worm originating as "the reddish one"? Wakuran (talk) 11:20, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Don't see how they could be saying anything else. From the entry it looks like Latin doesn't even have it, resting on Old French for the definition of a color. Alisheva (talk) 17:46, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/h₃erdʰ-

@Victar I see you added forms of the Sanskrit root ऋध् (ṛdh) to *h₃erdʰ- 6 years ago. Is there a source for this?

What Beekes mentions regarding ὀρθός (orthós) is वर्धति (vardhati) and ऊर्ध्व (ūrdhva), but that's from the root वृध् (vṛdh). What is given in The Indo-Aryan Inherited Lexicon as "irdhvá" (in the document I could find) must be some messed up code giving 'ū' as 'i'. Exarchus (talk) 14:50, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

My guess is that Proto-Indo-Iranian *r̥Hdʰwás should be changed back to original *Hr̥dʰwás, Lubotsky giving "Hrdʰua-". Whether ऊर्ध्व (ūrdhva) is from वृध् (vṛdh) is actually doubted by Lubotsky. Cantera probably does link it to that root, as he gives: "*(u̯)r̥Hdʰu̯ó- ‘upright’ (with dissimilation of the first u̯ in Indo-Iranian), Av. ərəδβa-, Phl. ul, OI ūrdhvá-", see {{R:ine:HCHIEL|489}}. Exarchus (talk) 15:50, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

Adding that de Vaan (see arduus) gives: "ūrdhvá- might be the regular outcome of Ilr. *Hrdʰua-" Exarchus (talk) 22:18, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

I further noticed that Tocharian B *ārtk- can't be from h₃erdʰ-, as Douglas reconstructs *hₐ (so *h₂ or *h₄). But a new reconstruction *h₂erdʰ- could be created for the Sanskrit terms from ऋध् (ṛdh) and *ārtk-. This is assuming that Greek ἀλθαίνω (althaínō) isn't related to ऋध् (ṛdh), otherwise LIV's *h₂eldʰ- seems the way to go. Exarchus (talk) 22:39, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

je

RFV of the etymology:

Borrowed from Old East Norse jak

The main problem I have with this is that this is a Norwegian Nynorsk entry, and Old East Norse was contempory with with Old West Norse, the ancestor of the ancestor of Norwegian Nynorsk. Why would Norwegian Nynorsk borrow directly from Old East Norse rather than from Norwegian Bokmål or Danish? Or did the borrowing happen in Middle Norwegian or Old West Norse? I don't doubt that there was a borrowing somewhere in the history of this word, but from which language into which language? Pinging @Eiliv, who added this. Chuck Entz (talk) 20:23, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

I guess it's based on the initial j-, which is considered a hallmark of the East Norse varieties. Wakuran (talk) 22:13, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

luva (glove)

Discussion moved from Wiktionary:Tea_room/2024/August#Luva_(glove).

The word for 'glove' in Galician and Portuguese has traditionally been derived from Gothic 𐌻𐍉𐍆𐌰 (lōfa, “palm of the hand”), but it seems obvious to me that it came insted from Germanic *galōfô, the same source as English glove. First of all, I dont know why Gothic specifically is mentioned, since several different Germanic tribes ended up in Iberia, secondly, inicial gl- regularly becomes l- in galician/portuguese so it just makes more sense to me that the word for 'glove' comes from the word for 'glove' (!) and not for the word for 'palm of the hand'. Let me know your thoughts. Sérgio R R Santos (talk) 00:33, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

This looks like a question for Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium. Voltaigne (talk) 11:44, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I just realised that after posting. Shall I delete this entry or leave it as it is? Sérgio R R Santos (talk) 13:58, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

I think the usual practice would be to leave this entry as it is, but add {{movedto|Wiktionary:Etymology_Scriptorium/2024/August#Luva_(glove)}} at the end to provide a link to the new location. Then add {{movedfrom|Wiktionary:Tea_room/2024/August#Luva_(glove)}} at the start of the corresponding discussion in the Etymology Scriptorium. Voltaigne (talk) 15:08, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

All right, thak you very much. Sérgio R R Santos (talk) 15:17, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Malay junjung

The etymology says that the word comes from Proto(-Western)-Malayo-Polynesian *zuŋzuŋ. Is there a source or reading that says so so it can be added to the Malay entry? Salakku (talk) 23:28, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

They probably got it from here, though the ACD normalizes the orthographies so it's not an exact match. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:09, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

tight, tighten, tyhtan

Looking into why tight#Adjective has /t/ instead of the /θ/ that PIE *t- → Proto-Germanic *þ- would be expected to produce, I see that the Middle English Dictionary suggests it's due to the influence of tighten (or perhaps more properly tight#Verb), from Old English tyhtan. Our entry on tyhtan doesn't give an etymology (and tight#Verb is currently in the same etymology section as the adjective), but Reconstruction:Proto-West Germanic/tuhtijan lists tyhtan as a descendant, which would explain its /t/. Before I expand tight with this explanation of the /t/, can anyone add what the PIE etymon of tyhtan / *tuhtijan (if known) is? - -sche (discuss) 23:43, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

One extended variant of Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/dewk-, I'd presume. Wakuran (talk) 23:59, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

And the -t- possibly from Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/-teh₂. Wakuran (talk) 00:19, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

I've added an etymology at tyhtan Leasnam (talk) 02:36, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

ਬੂਹਾ / بوہا – Punjabi word (būhā) for 'door'

Reconstructed to be from Prakrit, but I'm not sure if it's correct. This word is only found in Punjabic dialects (such as Saraiki ٻُوہا (ḇūhā) and Potwari بُووا (būvā)) and I'm inclined to believe it comes from Sanskrit द्वार (dvāra) since there is a dv > ḇ shift in Saraiki, which could explain how it comes from dvāra, but not the -hā. The word باری (bārī, “window”) also has the same origin. نعم البدل (talk) 08:25, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Does Polish "Zaporoże" really come straight from Ukrainian "Zaporizhzhya"?

To me, "Zaporoże" sounds like it might have been derived from Russian "Zaporozhye" (Запорожье) rather than Ukrainian "Zaporizhzhya" (Запоріжжя). The ж in "Запорожье" is certainly the same as Polish ż in "Zaporoże". So unless I'm missing something out in Russian, "Zaporoże" definitely looks like it would more plausibly come from Russian than Ukrainian. Pineways (talk) 13:57, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Generally speaking this is a common mistake around here: "The place is Ukrainian-speaking, so its name in any given language must be from Ukrainian." In your case, I agree that the Polish name is in line with the Russian form, though I'm not well-versed in Slavic onomastics. 92.218.236.20 17:06, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

It's not same, because the Russian variant written in Polish would be "Zaporożje". Also, it may be from medieval Ukrainian (I reckon, it used 'o' instead of 'i' in this case). Apparently, it's the same root as in Polish poroh borrowed from Ukrainian, but I don't know how old this word is in Polish and how common it is. So, not necessary from (modern) Russian. Tollef Salemann (talk) 17:59, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

It would not be Zaporożje because żj is hyperforeign. Vininn126 (talk) 19:13, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

I know, but its not what I see as a problem here. Tollef Salemann (talk) 19:38, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Sadly, Im not an expert in these kinda datings. What I see as possible, that ZaporOzhye was used not only in Russian, but by the Zaporozhian Cossacks, whom from the Polish borrowed the name. It is weird to NOT have a name for this region in Polish (of historical reasons), but I don't know how really old is this word in Polish (it may replaced some older word as well). So if it is like 3-4 houndreds years old, than am gonna be very doubtful that its origin is Russian (but not modern Ukrainian neither). Tollef Salemann (talk) 19:43, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Borrowings don't have to be purely phonetic - some form of adaptation to Polish norms (cf. the ending of the mentioned zaproże) can easily have happened, whatever the source. I do agree that Russian is more likely, but rather on historical grounds. Nicodene (talk) 19:32, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Strong agree. The purely phonetic argument can easily be disproved with the fact that when Polish borrows English words ending in -tion, you still end up with -cja. Vininn126 (talk) 19:37, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

See above. Am not putting any phonetic argument. I know its weird to borrow it unchanged into Polish. I just don't get it what with this sound is so important, whether or not it is same sound. My question is about the origins of /o/, because it is not so obvious if it is Russian or "Old Ukrainian" (here it calls Old Ruthenian, but i have very little knowledge about it, except of its stress paradigma). If this term in Polish is older than 3 centuries, I find it hard to believe that it came from Russian. So how old is it in Polish? And what the oldest known forms of it in the Eastern Slavic languages? Tollef Salemann (talk) 19:53, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Reconstruction:Latin/refusare

Claims to be a blend of refūtāre +‎ recūsāre. Is this plausible? The OED says that it's from refūsus, perfect passive participle of refundō. Ioaxxere (talk) 02:25, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

کس#Etymology_2

I wonder what makes the case for the kuksi-based etymology of the Persian کس.

I see many more Indo-Iranian similar-sounding, similar-meaning, words In Turner's Dictionary[1] (I couldn't find a definitive etymon there) - such as gudá (Sanskrit)(Actually this is from Mayerhofer, and also Lubotsky) and cūttu (Tamil, [Dravidian])(under "Cutta"), khŏḍ (Kashmiri), spanning the centuries. Some are more direct names of the vulva, while others are more or less as euphemistic, or associative, like kuksi and its reconstructed PIE root.

And trying follow down the German sources, it seems the phonetic shifts aren't straightforward. Why was kuksi picked up? And why is it given as Classical Persian, I only found references to a New Persian lexeme (and no good source to look for early attestations). Danny lost (talk) 18:27, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Wilkin and variants as coming from Slavic as opposed to Norman French

A book was published back in 2020 called "Forgotten Wolves of Wilkinaland" which, using linguistic, genetic and historical evidences, makes the case that Wilkin and variations of that name do not come from the Norman name William, but rather ultimately derives from the Slavic word wilk. Akaibu (talk) 18:57, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

It would sound plausible to me, as -in appears to be used in certain Slavic languages as a suffix e.g. Putin, Mishustin, Karmazin. Only problem is that "wilk" or "vilk" or some equivalent is mostly Western Slavic, whereas the -in suffix tends to mostly be used in Eastern Slavic languages. I don't dispute that "Wilkin" MAY be Slavic as it's only been some 1000 years since the two diverged so -in may conceivably be used in a Western Slavic language as a suffix for surnames, but I don't know the intricacies of Slavic surnames, so do not quote me on that. Pineways (talk) 01:44, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

Initially, it seems less likely to me, due to the sparse contacts between English and Slavic speakers, but it might be interesting to check out the hypothesis. Wakuran (talk) 17:13, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

You're right. I hadn't considered that - I had only considered if the formation of "Wilkin" as a surname would be possible in Slavic languages in the first place.

Although I suppose there could be a possibility that it got transported somehow with some Germanic people - remember the German word for border (Grenze) came from Slavic, and so did the Danish word grænse. Those two are rather late borrowings into Germanic languages compared to something like "Wilkin".

The proposal seems to be that Wilkin came about when the Veleti tribe of Slavs were assimilated into some Germanic people or something, was continuously used as a given name (that is, a forename), and got transported into Britain with Frisians and Danes. Pineways (talk) 10:47, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

The Scandinavian words like grænse came from Middle Low German, they weren't imported directly from Slavic, though. There are a few other words like that, from when the Hanseatic League ventured eastwards, presumably. Wakuran (talk) 11:07, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Wait, but Wilcinaland is Sweden. It became occupied by Russia, but Wilcin’s son got the throne in feodary. This legend was very popular back in the day, but maybe not in England, otherwise it may explain name’s use in England if it at all came from abroad. Where the Low German/Scandinavian name come from? Polish? Apparently, not Polabian. Anyway, why it can not be of Germanic origin? Tollef Salemann (talk) 20:20, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

It’s straightforwardly William (shortened; cf. Will) suffixed with -kin (diminutive). A recourse to Slavic is unnecessary and rather shaky on historical grounds. Nicodene (talk) 04:37, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

There's a Low German version listed as a variant of Wilken. Then, I guess William shortened with a suffixed -ken diminutive seems pretty credible there, as well. Wakuran (talk) 18:18, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

steal someone's thunder

RFV of the etymology.

@Gus Polly added an RFV for this etymology. I believe I found it in Southern Review, but it can also be found in The Words of Others: From Quotations to Culture by Gary Saul Morson, or the Yale Book of Quotations, edited by Fred Shapiro (page 312), or A New and General Biographical Dictionary, by G.W. Johnson (1795).

There are some hypotheses at Wikipedia. The connection to Jupiter and Greek Mythology feels tempting. Wakuran (talk) 22:55, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

That sounds rather superficial. The John Davies story sound like a publicity stunt—astounding! Alisheva (talk) 19:52, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

Ukranya in Turkish

Rather than just a misspelling of Ukrayna, isn't it more likely a fossilized form of Ottoman Turkish اوقرانیا? متذكر (talk) 13:53, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Orkhon

Etymology of Orkhon is kinda cheesy, and I check some stuff around and don't find pretty much nothing. On Wikipedia you may see etymology from or+khan (middle king), which seems like some kinda Turkic nationalist fringe-lingustics. Maybe am wrong tho, and it is the real etymology. Any Turkic and Mongolian experts have any commentaries? Tollef Salemann (talk) 17:44, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Sie

Ik i asked the same question before but where did the sense of it meaning "ye" come from? There seems to be no similar word (or any "she-[formal form of "you"] shift with the same semantics) in any other Germanic language apart from other so called mutually unintelligible "dialects" of High German. 84.70.32.172 19:54, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

I believe the consensus is that sie/ Sie is etymologically identical, whether meaning she, they or Ye. [2] Maybe a combination of Pluralis Majestatis and polite distance? Wakuran (talk) 00:53, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Etymology Briefs of Chavdar Ivaylov Georgiev

Someone has been posting etymology papers on the Internet Archive that may be worth looking into, it includes:

• Boris being ultimately of Iranian origins, with two proposed etymology paths.
• a paper on the ethnonym “Bulgarian”, that I can't personally parse except maybe antedating the term?
• a paper on "Proto-Bulgarian"/"Irano-Bulgarian" term for the title of ruler/king
• a paper on the Macedonian toponym "Vardar"
• a paper on the Bulgarian term "кур"

I'm not really well versed on comparative/historical linguistics like this but some of this might be bunk given I'm seeing some references to some fringe theories like Nostratic but perhaps the actual truth can be derived from the efforts shown here. Akaibu (talk) 20:07, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Sticking together Indo-European morphemes without attempting to support or weigh the conflicting verisimilitudes of various origin paths should, in spite of formal possibility, be called pseudoetymology. It does not help that these papers are formatted like the typical conspirationist pamphlets overeager for attention. There is a principle going something like if you use your marker pen on half of a text of yours you should reassess your personal intellectual priorities. Fay Freak (talk) 15:04, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Yep, seems to be obvious bunk, of the standard Balkan nationalist flavor. Not worth giving any time to. — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 15:56, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Have I understood correctly that the same guy wrote Vanga's prophecy from 1979 about Putin, quoting a Russian ex-communist paper from 1997, which is quoting a Russian-Bulgarian writress, using comic sans? Tollef Salemann (talk) 16:53, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Morocco

Since no one cared to reply to me in the Discussion of that page, here I am! My main problem is in describing the word as comming from Arabic: Asturian, Aragonese and Spanish Marruecos, with /ue/ corresponding to Portuguese Marrocos, with /ɔ/, clearly point to the word already existing in Iberian Latin, which would mean that the source for the Iberian word was probably Berber, and not Arabic. Furthermore, the typical given etymology of ⴰⵎⵓⵔ ⵏ ⴰⴽⵓⵛ (amur n akuc, literally “Land of God”) sounds like the most obvious folk etymology I have ever heard. Unless it's attested historially, which I think it's not. One final note, the modern berber words for the city of marrakesh are Kabyle Meṛṛakec and Tashelhit Mrrakc, which actually look more similar to the Iberian words than the supposed fancy etymology. Sérgio R R Santos (talk) 21:37, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

The city of Marrakesh was only founded in 1070 AD, so it is quite implausible that the name was inherited through Latin. The correspondence of Portuguese /ɔ/ and Castilian /we/ must be explained otherwise. I would suppose that Castilian borrowed it from Portuguese and in the process the vowel was changed by analogy. This happens all the time when words are borrowed between closely related languages. (Take for example the verb "to dance" in German dialects, which is "tanzen" or "danzen" in the same way that these dialects have shifted Germanic d or not, but this is entirely due to analogy as the verb only entered German in the 12th century.)

Regarding the further origin of the name, I don't know on what knowledge you base your claim of a "most obvious folk etymology". It might be one, of course, but I don't see how that is obvious. If the form Marrakesh in all its variants (Arabic, Berber, European) goes back to "amur n akuc", it has obviously been contracted early on, but there's no problem in that. The name can even have existed long before the city was founded. It just cannot have been relevant to Iberians at that time. 92.218.236.20 14:04, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Unrelated examples aren't supportive. German has both t and d and would borrow low german d as d any time of day. Alisheva (talk) 17:43, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

More importantly, the historic founding of a city in archived records is not prerequisite for the establishment of same name in realite. Alisheva (talk) 17:50, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

@Alisheva (1.) My example is exactly to the point to show what it was intended to show, namely that closely related languages often (though not necessarily, of course) artificially reproduce sound laws by analogy. "Tanzen" is exactly such an example as it was borrowed from Middle Dutch "dansen" and then took on an analogous t- when it reached Upper German dialects that have t for Germanic *d. Examples of this phenomenon in German are very numerous. Just to give you one more, take "Pfote", a Low German word in which the onset pf is purely analogous. So no, High German will not borrow Low German d as d "any time of the day". It will these days, but in the past it might or might not.
(2.) I specifically acknowledged that in my last two sentences, didn't I? However, before the city existed nobody in Iberia would've been aware of or interested in the name of an empty field in Northern Africa. 92.218.236.20 19:57, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Strictly speaking, no. Your existential qualifier is out of scope. Because you don't claim an original coinage and deny the current theory there is no time 0 in your coordinate system other than the status quo ante.

Going by the current theory I'd consider that the "land of god" may be a euphemism of "an empty field" indeed, e.g. the eponymous(?) housing projects situated in the middle of nowhere in the movie Cidade de Deus, though I didn't sight the sources. You chiefly deny the theory without argument as if you didn't read them either. Alisheva (talk) 20:46, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

ζώω

Please see the edit history and discussion history for ζώω. I have continued to add more and more specific references. User User:Theknightwho, please discuss here rather than continuing to revert. Briefly, what I have done is to correct an entry based on a standard modern etymological reference work (AFAIK the best known one in English). The material I replaced was the kind of thing typically given in older traditional descriptions, is not supported by modern scholarship, and was not in any case supported by any reference to any source. User User:Theknightwho, if you think this is controversial among modern scholars, please (a) support that with some kind of reference to a modern, scholarly work (not just a grammar textbook or something), and (b) edit the article to show what you think the controversy would be, rather than repeatedly simply reverting the article back to its previous form, in which it cited no sources at all.--2607:FB90:FD1A:C649:4FA2:FA1:D4D4:59DD 01:46, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Whatever you may know about Ancient Greek, you're really bad at dictionary writing. A rambling discussion about why all the other dictionaries are wrong isn't a definition. With some editing, it might work as an etymology, though. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:13, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

@Chuck Entz They also don’t seem to understand that it makes no sense to write about how ζάω (záō) is “fictitious” at the entry for ζώω (zṓō), while making no mention of that at that actual entry for ζάω itself. The additional reference they claim to have provided is merely a use of ζώω, which is irrelevant to demonstrating ζάω does not exist. That’s aside from the fact that the burden of proof is not on me here: the references provided on both entries clearly support how our entries are currently structured; a single, non-specific reference to Beekes’ etymological dictionary not overturn that, and certainly doesn’t justify the rambling, speculative passage that this user keeps trying to add. Theknightwho (talk) 09:22, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Is there a reason for being so gruff with newcomers? Is it that shock-therapy is deemed more effective than gentle guidance? This is a serious question, not a rhetorical one. I'm asking because to me it comes across as unnecessarily unsulting. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 17:35, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Is there some policy forbidding verbs from being lemmatized at their contract form? That's what LSJ seems to do (the main entry is at "ζῶ (contr. fr. ζώω: ζάω only in Gramm., EM 410.38)", and there's a redirect at "ζάω, v. ζῶ."). I see that the page was in fact moved from ζῶ in 2014, but perhaps that should be reverted if the form ζάω is unused and etymologically dubious. Wiktionary:About Ancient Greek doesn't say anything on the main page, although in the talk archives I see a statement by Eru·tuon that "for contracted verbs, we're choosing the uncontracted form, which is Ionic and not Attic or Koine. It would probably be accurate to say either Attic, Koine, or uncontracted." In any case, ζῶ certainly should not be a hard redirect.--Urszag (talk) 11:48, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

@Urszag I agree about the hard redirect, so I've deleted it. Someone can (and should) now create the full entry, and I assume the reason that's not been done in the last 10 years is because of the misleading blue link. Theknightwho (talk) 18:58, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

September 2024

aquafaba

We currently claim that the French term comes from English, and that the coinage in English was by Goose Wohlt in 2015. However, from reading the English Wikipedia entry, it seems that his discovery of aquafaba as a cooking ingredient coincided with that of that the French musician Joël Roessel. Based on what we know, is it possible to definitively state whether the term originated in French or English, and who coined actually coined it in the first instance? ---> Tooironic (talk) 01:01, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Following the Wiktionary links, it appears that Joël discovered aquafaba but actually called it ‘blanc de pois chiches’[3] but Goose, or perhaps his Facebook associates, invented the term ‘aquafaba’ a bit later[4] Overlordnat1 (talk) 06:36, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Severonis

The protist Severonis is the type genus of the family Severonidae. I have not been able to find its etymology. I think the name is derived from a proper name, a person or a place of discovery. Gerardgiraud (talk) 07:40, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

@Gerardgiraud: here is the original description, but I can't see enough of the article to find anything helpful. My only guess is that it might have something to do with Russian север (sever, “north”). Chuck Entz (talk) 05:07, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

This may be an approach, but it remains to be decided on the suffix -onis, meaning woodlouse in Latin. Gerardgiraud (talk) 11:32, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Turkish kaka

turkish kaka same meaning as Proto-Indo-European *kakka-

Maybe from persian ککه? Zbutie3.14 (talk) 15:02, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Maybe, but I think it's also one of those globally spread baby talk words like mama and papa/dada. —Mahāgaja · talk 16:37, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Korean 설거지

I'm probably on the completely wrong track, but might the first syllable be from Old Chinese 洗 (OC: Baxter-Sagart /*[s]ˤərʔ/, Zhengzhang /*sɯːlʔ/)? Awelotta (talk) 04:45, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Yiddish productivity of ־סטווע

As title. We've got היפּאָקריטסטווע (hipokritstve), which from all the dictionaries I've consulted, seems to be a pretty well-accepted word for "hypocrisy", yet Russian гипокри́тство (gipokrítstvo) and Ukrainian гіпокрі́тство (hipokrítstvo) are almost unheard of, which suggests that this formation could perhaps be internal to Yiddish in the form of היפּאָקריט (hipokrit) +‎ ־סטווע (-stve). And now, I've just encountered a צבֿועצטווע (tsvuatstve) as seen here, from the same root as צבֿועק (tsvuak). So clearly this is an internal Yiddish formation, unless somewhere in Eastern Europe, they've borrowed tsvua into their vernacular of Slavic languages, appended the Slavic ending, and then started using it in their Yiddish as well. So could we consider ־סטווע (-stve) a productive suffix in Yiddish now? I imagine it might require finding more nouns ending in this suffix that aren't direct Slavic borrowings in and of themselves, but I reckon צבֿועצטווע (tsvuatstve) makes a pretty convincing case for the suffix being actually productive in Yiddish. And of course the spelling ־צטווע (-tstve) as opposed to ־טסטווע (-tstve) also mirrors the rebracketing found in Polish -ctwo and Belarusian -цтва (-ctva). So what do we say? Productive or not? Insaneguy1083 (talk) 10:59, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Update: I've also just discovered רביסטװע (rebistve) as well as גזלעווויסטווע (gazlevoystve), the latter of which seems to be related to גזלן (gazlen). Are three words enough to constitute productivity? Insaneguy1083 (talk) 11:59, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Productivity of course is a spectrum, not a binary. I certainly think the fact that it's added to non-Slavic words, even if only a handful, is sufficient to warrant creating an entry for ־סטווע (-stve) as a Yiddish suffix. —Mahāgaja · talk 07:32, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

קאָנזשילעס

Anyone got an idea of where the kon- component comes from? In my mind it immediately goes to some sort of Polish ką-, but I couldn't find any word starting with kąży-. Insaneguy1083 (talk) 11:11, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

klirren

any idea of what the etymology of klirren is? i can't find it Cheesypenguigi (talk) 13:19, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

There is none. Pfeifer dates it to the 17th century while noting earlier sound-word(?) *klirr* and half a dozen of different half sound-symbolic half sound-imitative verbs. I can confirm that it is used as an interjection, but I doubt that the theory of sound-symbolsim is thorough. It cannot be confirmed by similar formations in completely unrelated languages, it isn't imitative of noise. I.e. would clash be similar enough, modulo iota-rhotacism? karashi (karashi)? After a day of idle speculation I have two doublets in PIE, *kelh₁-, *ḱelh₂- and *gleyH-, *h₂leyH-, ... twice as many onomatopeia and a couple of wanderwords of ultimately unknown origin, limiting myself honestly. In conclusion: 1. If intransitive verbs in pronoun droping languages look like onomatopoeia, question morphology. Alisheva (talk) 18:39, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

prallen

sorry for making another topic, but i also need the etymology for prallen. Cheesypenguigi (talk) 13:24, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

@Cheesypenguigi: Usually, that is for any word part of current German as opposed to exotisms, you just click on the link for Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache on the bottom. Wolfgang Pfeifer, d. 2020, wrote his etymologies there, providing the best etymological dictionary of German, and all needed associations. Fay Freak (talk) 13:44, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Cf. Prellbock (w:de:Prellbock), refer back to Fay Freak for بره, cf. ram, Rammbock for the typical comparison. Not entirely sure, of course. Alisheva (talk) 18:06, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

bodge

How sure are we about the current distribution of senses between etymology 1 and etymology 2? On what basis do we assume the adjective meaning "insane" is more closely related to the noun "water in which a smith would quench items heated in a forge" than to "clumsy/inelegant job", for example? - -sche (discuss) 19:37, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

*kreupaną

brought up creepypasta's etymon in a disccusion with @Ythedegengo and they took issue with *kreupaną coming from *yéti(this was an edit made by @Ioaxxere, who admitted to me that this was indeed likely wrong) and suggests it's actually comes from *-eti

"All the other Germanic class II strong verbs that have complete reconstructions give *-eti"

*-eti = thematic vowel *-e- + infinitive *-ti

Akaibu (talk) 04:47, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Boethius βοηθέω source

I think this name is from on the Greek word βοηθέω (and means helper or helpful), but I cannot find a good source. 72.203.88.75 06:29, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Sranan Tongo sebrefata

Could it be from Twi? AG202, Egbingíga, Lambiam, does this ring any bells? Appolodorus1 (talk) 08:11, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Lacking a better theory, it cannot be excluded that the word came to Suriname with enslaved Twi speakers. But is there a specific argument in favour of the theory? Is a cognate found in Aukan or any other language (e.g. Jamaican Creole) that has terms derived from Akan?  --Lambiam 21:53, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

puyuh

How did the word "puyuh" derive from *puRuq? Is it possible that the change of the word "puyuh" from Proto-Austronesian *puRuq be due to influences from Philippine languages, like Kapampangan, which is known for changing the sound *R to "y"? Aprihani (talk) 12:48, 4 September 2024 (UTC)