Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium/2009/February

I do not see the reason for including several ancient languages and thus encumbering the etymology. Would it be acceptable to leave only Akkadian, the most ancient one? Especially when the Coptic was not explicitly written? Bogorm 22:15, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

What do you mean by "Coptic was not written" ? I agree that ancient languages should have predominantly ancient cognates, and in this particular case linking to *labiʾ- might be the most reasonable thing (as there are other equally "ancient" languages like Hebrew, Eblaite, Ugaritic etc.) --Ivan Štambuk 22:47, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

There was neither the original Coptic(~Greek) script nor transliteration. Amongst Semitic languages, Akkadian is the most ancient and I would opt for it to remain. Proto... are reconstructions by contemporary linguists and thus a theory, not a cognate. Bogorm 22:58, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Uhm, you are aware of the existence of Coptic and Demotic scripts, used to write the latest phase of the Egyptian language? :) Egyptian language is genetically parallel to the whole Semitic branch in Afro-Asiatic terms, so mentioning it would be very much relevant for comparison purposes of this very ancient word..

The most "ancient" (in meaning "the earliest attested") of Semitic languages is not Akkadian but actually Eblaite...but lots of these "languages" are actually collections of various dialect spoken for several millenia, so you can get e.g. Ugaritic or Hebrew word for "lion" attested earlier than Akkadian! And Akkadian was not the most conservative Semitic language (Arabic is).

Proto-Semitic reconstructions are valid scientific theories (not "theories" in the abused sense of the word theory). It is doubtless that all Semitic languages have sprung from the same common source, and the fact that the reconstructions comparative method establishes were not attested does not mean that these terms did not exist in the shape the reconstructions predict them. Semitic languages are very conservative (much more than IE) due to their peculiar morphology (roots + transfixes), so these reconstructions have an aura of very great certainty around them. Just compare the reflexes of Proto-Semitic reconstructions in daughter languages on those Proto-Semitic appendix pages - in lots of cases they're retained unchanged, or with trivial sound changes a child could devise on sight. Common Semitic disintegrated approx. at the same time as Late Proto-Indo-European (4th millennium BCE), so you can get the picture in what "conservative" terms we're talking about --Ivan Štambuk 23:25, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Was Coptic written? Well, in one word ⲤⲈ!—Strabismus 00:19, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Skok officially disproves the theory about the Tr and Arabic word meaning world. Thence I added Template:rfv-etymology. He mentions as a third theory Turkish al, red, but explicitly discourages this one:

Svakako nema nikakve veze ni s turskom riječi alem »svijet«

Bogorm 12:49, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

There are actually two different words (sharing the spelling, but different tones)

1. álem "world" (which is doubtless from Ottoman Turkish, ultimately from Arabic عالم (̔āläm, “world”), the term being spread through Islamic terminology), and
2. àlem "jewel, treasure" and also "Islamic crescent with 3 or 4 spheres underneath" according to my dictionary, also deriving from Ottoman Turkish but ultimately from Arabic علم (̔aläm, “sign, token; symbol; banner”) according to my source..

Need to check this latter one though (semantic shift doesn't look to convincing IMHO). --Ivan Štambuk 13:17, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, then Skok explicitly discourages from accepting the first (which is the case here). He mentiones 3 theories about the origin, so even if you find the correct Tr. word for the third theory, the possibility that it is correct still would not exceed 34%. Anyway, I am hesitating between the Greek and Old French hypothesis, they both sound convincing... You? Bogorm 13:43, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, definitely the relationship with Arabic word for "flag; symbol" is semasiologically inexplicable and far-fetched. However, the relationship with the supposed alaniAndina < Medieval Latin al(l)amanđina < alabandina < Alabanda (notable for its gemstones, as WP article confirms) doesn't look too convincing either. Ottoman Turkish al (“red”) (itself borrowed from Persian آل (āl, “reddish, shinning”)) OTOH looks much promising IMHO, because the same root has been preserved in various adjectives (alast, alen, alav etc.) and moreover given names (Alemka), so the most economic explanation would account it as a simple synchronic derivative of the adjective denoting "red, reddish, shiny". But none of this is fully satisfactory if you ask me. Old French is not mentioned as a source BTW, but as a identically-meaning reflex of some Romance/Middle Latin verb devised from that city's name.

So prob. all 3 theories should be mentioned with the accompanying criticism. I'll see if I can find some attestations of this and related words in some old documents. --Ivan Štambuk 14:17, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Can the Gypsy word be cognate with Sanskrit kukkura, dog? Sounds similar. Bogorm 14:43, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

They could be very easily (changes of k > č/dž and r>l or l>r are phonetically quite trivial). Interestingly, Skok does not discuss Turkish and Arabic origin at all, but Arj. 3:540 that he references doesn't mention Gypsy etymology at all. My other source claims the borrowing line as Dijan original put it. However, the Gypsy etymology is plainly superior if the meaning of the Gypsy is indeed "dog" (as opposed to Turkish/Arabic "ignorant"). I'd still like to see some additional verification though. --Ivan Štambuk 14:54, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Is this Arabic word borrowed from (Ottoman) Turkish baklava, or the source of it? I'm perplexed as I have two dictionaries claiming both directions (though I trust more the one claiming Turkish > Arabic line of borrowing, but the usual borrowing sequence with these two languages is in the opposite direction hence the reluctance). --Ivan Štambuk 08:13, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

The structure of the word is strange for Arabic (the اوة part), so I’m convinced that Arabic borrowed it from Turkish. —Stephen 14:53, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Also see this if you haven't already.—Strabismus 19:22, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

We have conflicting information on the etymology of the term; the original borrowing sequence I've put Gujarati < Portuguese < Tamil < Sanskrit was based on Merriam-Webster, and Dijan transformed it to Portuguese < Gujarati < Sanskrit which is apparently what Random House dictionary claims. Other dictionaries don't offer much details, but simply mention that it was named after the Hindu merchants who conducted business under the tree. --Ivan Štambuk 00:01, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

AHD also claims Portuguese < Gujarati < Sanskrit. --Ivan Štambuk 00:45, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Is there any possibilty this English word is related to Danish dræbe, Faroese drepa, Icelandic drepa, Norwegian drepe, Old Norse drepa, Swedish dräpa? Some dictionaries I've looked at say unknown and others say possibly or perhaps from Arabic ضرب (ḍarb, “beating, hitting”) / ضرب (ḍáraba, “to beat, to strike”). — This unsigned comment was added by Hippietrail (talk • contribs) at 07:47, 19 February 2009.

There are serious sources corroborating the Germanic origin. In “drub”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC. the kinship with drepa is explicitly mentioned and a kinship with OE drepen/drepan is listed as probable. In ODS the kinship between OE and ON is undoubted. I am just curious how and since when this Arabic claim was started to be promoted. Can someone check the entry in OED? And præferably, juxatapose an older edition, let's say, before the 1930es, with the most recent one. Bogorm 21:26, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Ernest Klein's 1966 Etymological dictionary of English mentions that the original meaning was "to bastinado", and that the word probably comes from Arabic ضرب (ḍarb), while Germanic origin is not even mentioned.

Old English drepen (“to strike”), Old Norse drepa (“to strike”), Old Saxon (deprecated template usage) ofar-drepan and Old High German treffan (“to strike”) are cognates, stemming ultimately from Proto-Germanic strong verb *(deprecated template usage) đrepanan obviously originally meaning "to strike, hit". That Germanic verb is sometimes postulated to gave Indo-European origin, and compared to Common Slavic *(deprecated template usage) drobiti, tho the formal relationship is a bit problematic from modern IE theories (lack of Winter's law in Slavic requires PIE *dʰrobʰ-, while Germanic form presupposes *dʰreb-)

The real question is whether the English drub is a reflex of Old English drepen. It seems rather not. --Ivan Štambuk 00:21, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

It seems almost impossible that this is from any kind of Old English, since it is not recorded before the 17th century. The OED notes that, ‘all the early instances are from travellers in the Orient, and refer to the bastinado. Hence, in the absence of any other tenable suggestion, it may be conjectured to represent Arabic đaraba "to beat, to bastinado".’ Ƿidsiþ 07:05, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Is this cognate to Ancient Greek ἀράχνη (arákhnē, “spider”)? Nadando 04:39, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

A derivative of arāneus (“spider”). Those very similar words for "spider" are found only in Greek and Latin, and tho doubtless related, probably not of Proto-Indo-European origin (beside the lack of cognates and of other productive derivations of the same root, the proto-form would be also difficult to reconstruct formally). According to Beekes, they're most likely both borrowed from some unknown Mediterranean source. If ancient Indo-European, which is not likely, then the word stem is prob. related to Greek ἄρκυς (árkus, “net”).

According to one theory (itself prob. not worthy mentioning in the etymology sections as being too ORish), those would be compounds originally meaning "wool-spinner", derived from lāna and λάχνη (lákhnē) respectively, both meaning "wool", and comparable to clear-cut Sanskrit compound ऊर्णनाभ (ūrṇa-nābha, “spider”) orig. from ऊर्ण (ūrṇa, “wool”) + nābha ( < nāha < root नह् (√nah, “to bind, tie, fasten”)). However, the addition of prothetic word-initial /a/ and the change of /l/ to /r/ (phonetically very trivial sound change, occurring in many languages, e.g. PIE *wĺ̥kʷos (“wolf”) > Sanskrit वृक (vṛ́kas)) would then be unexplained. So it might be "wool-something" type of compound/derivation in some extinct and unattested IE language, whence borrowed to Latin and Greek, but that remains a big speculation. Like Sanskrit, in lots of languages the word for spider is derived from the root "to spin" (e.g. German Spinne < spinnen). --Ivan Štambuk 04:12, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, very interesting. Nadando 05:16, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

According to Professor Alfred Ernout and Dictionnaire Étymologique de la langue latin, the word stems undoubtedly (sans doute) from *arak-sn . However, he ends on that and I am not sure what *arak may stand for and whether it has any connection with Greek ἄρκυς. Bogorm 10:57, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Note that according to modern laryngeal theory framework PIE did not have */a/ sound, and that the word-initial ἀC- in Greek is nowadays (usually, it could also come from other sources) reconstructed as a reflex of word-initial laryngeal *h₂C, which would regularly be lost in Latin. Plus there's the problem of this alleged *h₂rh₂ek- (post-PIE > *arak-) stem 1) not having cognates in other IE branches 2) not being productive at all beside in this particular word, and in this reconstructed form cannot be formally matched to ἄρκυς 3) *-sn- is not a valid suffix in PIE (or Greek and Latin, for that matter) derivational morphology AFAIK. Ernout's Dictionnaire from 1951 is a bit outdated when it comes to matters such as this.. --Ivan Štambuk 16:02, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

It is classical, please reconsider misusing that outdated. Atelaes already explained its applicability to science - physics, biology asf., but the entirely different measurement in linguistics. Professos Alfred Ernout is an incontestable authority in research of Latinity. Why, why all these novelties, when all is well explained, cogent and sound in 1951? Bogorm 16:38, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorry Bogorm, but the reconstruction of the form *araksn- is way too outdated to be used on Wiktionary. A few centuries ago similar "incontestable authorities" derived Greek and Latin words from Hebrew (the "language of God"). I'm sure that Ernout's Dictionnaire has its place in the annals of linguistic science, just as Etymologicum Magnum, Nirukta writings by Yāska or Pāṇini and other obsoleties do now. I'm not saying that either of them is 100% wrong or obsolete in every respect, but they certainly are in great many, and we simply cannot treat hypotheses and conclusions reached by modern scholarship as being equally conclusive as those of the previous centuries. --Ivan Štambuk 18:18, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

WNWD (1959)

Arabic and Peruvian together?—Strabismus 19:48, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

• That seems crazy. According to the RAE, it's from Aymara (deprecated template usage) all-paka. Ƿidsiþ 17:34, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I concur. I have no idea what Guralnik, et al. based that on. Unless, of course, they were assuming that all non-Latinate/-Indo-European words in Spanish beginning with "al-" have an Arabic origin. But even there it's an overgeneralization.—Strabismus 02:01, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

WNWD (1959):

—Strabismus 20:02, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, the Old French word was mentioned in Harper's Onl. Et. Dict., but he explains further that it is from Proto Germanic origin and compared it to the ON one. Bogorm 21:16, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Then should we reflect that in the etym. in the main article (or should I say "maim" article)?—Strabismus 19:34, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Online Etymology Dictionary claims some Old Norse word (deprecated template usage) flak as the origin for the Old English word. However, there is not such word in Old Norse and the corresponding one (according to ODS) is (deprecated template usage) fleka/(deprecated template usage) fleki. Interestingly, there is a Norwegian word flak which means torn piece. I think that claiming OE < Norwegian descendance would look strange, but here comes Bokmålsordboka on succor and explains that the Norwegian word descends from unattested ON *(deprecated template usage) flaga and I am fairly convinced that this provides the solution to the issue whence the OE word was borrowed - the answer is English flake < OE ... < ON *(deprecated template usage) flaga ( > Norwegian (deprecated template usage) flak). Are there any objections against putting the italicised text in the etymology section? Bogorm 12:57, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

• Yes. ON (deprecated template usage) flaga seems more analogous to English flay to me. Flake is a weird one... the OED say "of difficult etymology: possibly several distinct words have coalesced", so I am wary of any "simple" solution. It may have existed in OE, though it's not attested before Chaucer. OED also suggests ON (deprecated template usage) flóke as cognate. I don't think we can reasonably just invent a solution, however tempting, unless there is some authority for it. Ƿidsiþ 16:54, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

(From WT:TR:)

The etymology contradicts the Wikipedia entry, which says that "bonspiel" comes from Scots, while this says it comes from German and French, but bonspiel describes a tournament of curling, which is a Scottish sport... 76.66.193.90 12:33, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

• It entered English from Scotland, that's for certain, and is attested in Scots earlier than "proper" English. Where the Scots word came from is a mystery though. Probably it is some kind of Germanic, because of the spiel, but Wikipedia sounds like it's overstating the case a little. The OED suggests unattested Dutch *(deprecated template usage) bondspel as a source. (PS this should probably be at Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium..) Ƿidsiþ 15:48, 27 February 2009 (UTC)