moosa
Hopi
[edit]Etymology
[edit]From Proto-Uto-Aztecan *musa (“wildcat”), with the meaning shifted to "domestic cat" under the influence of Spanish mizo (“(domestic) cat”) (resulting in the empty semantic space for "wildcat" being filled by the Ute loanword tokotsi).[1] Compare Classical Nahuatl miztli (“puma”).
Noun
[edit]moosa (plural moomost)
- domestic cat (animal)
- Imosa tooki nuy qa puwna
- My cat didn't let me sleep last night
References
[edit]- ^ 1998, Kenneth C. Hill, Spanish loanwords in Hopi, in The Life of Language: Papers in Linguistics in Honor of William Bright (edited by Jane H. Hill, P. J. Mistry, Lyle Campbell), page 22
Further reading
[edit]- A Concise Hopi and English Lexicon (→ISBN, 1985)