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Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium/2014/April

jism
While reading on Encyclopædia Iranica, I learned that jism (also jesm) happens to be a Persian word for "body", as well. The meaning seems a bit off so I don't intend to seriously suggest a connection, but it surely made me go hmmm for a moment. (Actually, the only way I'm familiar with the English word jism is through its relevance for the etymology of jazz, although by now I'm of course familiar with the related term jizz.) Turns out there are several erotic films from South Asia titled Jism (after the Persian word, present as a borrowing in Urdu and Hindi), a potential source of unintended amusement for Anglophone audiences outside South Asia. Just throwing this one out here. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 02:07, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

hirsi
Something doesn't quite add up about this etymology. It says that it's from Pre-Finnic širti, of Slavic origin, and implies that the Pre-Finnic š- is a reflex of Slavic ž-. But as far as I know, Proto-Finnic is older than Proto-Slavic, so it doesn't work out at all chronologically. Of course, it could have been borrowed in pre-Slavic times, but then it's the ž sound that is suspect. Proto-Slavic žь formed either from gь through the second palatalisation, or from gjъ through iotation. Both of those changes happened relatively late in Slavic history (as they affected most Germanic loanwords), so it's hardly possible that such a word was borrowed into Proto-Finnic early enough for it to have undergone š > h, which is a regular sound change of Proto-Finnic date. 14:26, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
 * See p. 159, especially footnote 13. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:05, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

souse
Anyone keen to have a go at this? I've literally never heard this word before (as an Australian), and I've been speaking English for a long time. The state of neglect of this entry, coupled with the number of senses that people have dumped in there, suggests that it is a regionalism (possibly British?).

I'm putting it here because it needs an etymology-fan to undertake the task of cleaning it up. This, that and the other (talk) 11:07, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

 * I took a run at the structure (ie, three etymologies and some subsenses) and the first etymology. I was not impressed by Century's rendition of the second etymology and found no other source. The third seems indeed trivial. DCDuring TALK 14:04, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

 * FWIW, I'm used to the first etymology's senses, but I'd never encountered the second or third etymology's senses. Native English speaker in the US, born and raised in Virginia.  ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 17:34, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
 * That's why I reordered the etymologies to place the one with common senses at the top. I don't doubt that all of the definitions in all of the etymology sections had some currency in the 19th century, as reflected in the entries in Merriam-Webster 1913 and Century. Some of our definitions are just copies or paraphrases of these. Our subjective impressions plus review of other dictionaries are often the only practical means of determining how to label the less common senses. OED; Century; and MW 1828, 1913, c1935 and c1965 are useful for estimating dates of currency. We have many, many definitions that are very uncommon, some for homonyms that are currently virtually unused now. Very little translation effort or user attention should go to these, but absent labels provide no clue about this. DCDuring TALK 20:11, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

squeamish
In reply to Talk:squeamish:

See Anatoly Liberman's OUP etymology blog.

If it's an old blend involving qualmish, and the original meaning is more like "easily repulsed", squirm suggests itself as partner, although it's unclear if squirm is that old, especially in the meaning "to recoil or twist in discomfort". Other words such as squeal, squeak, scream, and for the current meaning squint might have reinforced this formation. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:05, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

Slavic rain
I saw this edit by User:Angr. Even though seems better than, it still seems strange to me. Is it possible it could have been ? --WikiTiki89 18:03, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I got from Terence R. Carlton, Introduction to the Phonological History of the Slavic Languages (Slavica Publishers, 1990, ISBN 0-89357-223-3, who says that the jotation of zd and zg is ždž, parallel to the jotation of st and sk to šč. When not after z, the jotations of d and g are different (ď and ž respectively), but after z they merge. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 18:11, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
 * What's ? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 18:30, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
 * A.k.a iotation. --WikiTiki89 18:41, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
 * It's an alternative spelling of . The example of stj and skj > šč is wrong, though. In OCS the result is št, as in modern Bulgarian. What are the outcomes of these four sequences in other Slavic languages? 18:44, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
 * In Polish at least (I don't know about the smaller Lechitic languages) stj/skj became szcz and zdj/zgj became żdż, and these cannot come from šť and žď; in Belarusian, Ukrainian, and Slovene stj/skj became šč and zdj/zgj became ždž (be+uk)/žj (sl), but these could all come from earlier šť and žď. In the other languages they became št and žd or šť and žď. So only Polish has clear evidence for šč and ždž as opposed to šť and žď, but šč/ždž > šť/žď is a pretty natural dissimilation, and positing the opposite sound change (šť/žď > šč/ždž) for Polish is problematic because ť/ď normally become c/dz in Polish, so you'd expect *sc/zdz rather than szcz/żdż. At some level though, whether we write šč or šť for sla-pro is a purely notational issue; the point is that the contrasts č~ť and dž~ď were neutralized after s/z (which became š/ž in that context). —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 19:25, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I guess for some reason I didn't realize that dž represented an affricate rather than d + ž, so it makes more sense to me now. Before I was wondering where the ž would have come from. --WikiTiki89 00:06, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that's why some people write it ǰ or ǯ rather than dž, but dž is by far the most common spelling. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 09:25, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

hio
Could someone double-check the PIE here? Unaspirated *ǵ oughtn't give Latin h, I'm wondering if it was mistranscribed for *ǵʰ. 4pq1injbok (talk) 11:52, 11 April 2014 (UTC)
 * De Vaan has ǵʰ, and that's also the only way it could fit with the Germanic descendants. I've fixed it. 13:18, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

secundus
RFV of the etymology. I heard that the FPP of sequor is sequendus? --kc_kennylau (talk) 10:56, 12 April 2014 (UTC)
 * It's probably an older fossilised form. I don't think there is really any doubt that it came from the same root, in any case. 13:03, 12 April 2014 (UTC)
 * shows derivation from sequor, which accounts for the range of meanings. DCDuring TALK 14:31, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

*orzkrǫtiti
Does someone know conjugation of Proto-Slavic verb *orzkrǫtiti? 89.201.180.7 21:49, 12 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I've added it. 22:15, 12 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks. 89.201.180.7 23:17, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

Slavic verbs ending with *-ěti
Does someone know conjugations of Proto-Slavic verbs ending with *-ěti? Examples, , , , , ... As I see we don't have this type of verbs yet, and it would be of so much help to me. Thanks in advance. Une nymphe (talk) 01:53, 13 April 2014 (UTC)
 * There were different kinds. Slavic verbs in general always have two principal parts, so the infinitive alone doesn't tell you the conjugation of the whole verb. You need the present stem as well, and there were a variety of present stems with infinitives in *-ěti. There's a full list at Appendix:Proto-Slavic verbs. 01:55, 13 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Could you create some of this just for demonstration? Une nymphe (talk) 02:02, 13 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I created, and we already had . 02:13, 13 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I see... however how is that in Serbo-Croatian verbal noun from ' is viđenje instead of vidijenje or verbal naun from ' in Slovenian and Serbo-Croatian is življenje instead of živenje and živlijenje? These look like they ware made from ' and '. Same is with others. What do you think? Une nymphe (talk) 02:26, 13 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Maybe you answered the question already. Both types of verbs share the same present tense stem, so it's possible that other parts of the paradigms were influenced by each other. 02:36, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

*jьskati
Could someone put conjugation for *jьskati, it seems there is no inflection-table tamplete for it. So if anyone knows. 5.43.185.191 18:22, 15 April 2014 (UTC)
 * There is already a template on the page.  18:29, 15 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm not an experienced user. Can you create it, or perhaps someone else? 5.43.185.191 18:33, 15 April 2014 (UTC)
 * The template means that we know that something needs to be done, and it's on our to-do list. But there's only so much the editors here can do at once, so it may take some time. Improving the Proto-Slavic templates is just one item on a long list of things I plan to do, eventually...  18:36, 15 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Can you create this one now? I would really like to know conjugation for *jьskati and would really like to ad conjugations for other Proto-Slavic words sharing this templates. So if you have some time to spear... 5.43.185.191 18:50, 15 April 2014 (UTC)
 * To be honest, I'm not even sure what the inflection was. The present stem shows the first palatalisation *sk > *šč, but that could result from both *-ske- (a simple thematic present, like ) and *-skje- (j-present, like ). I don't know which of the two types this verb belonged to. 19:05, 15 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I think present was *jьščǫ and verbal noun *jьskanьje and imperfect *jьskaaxъ. 5.43.185.191 19:29, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

 * I put it. I believe this is correct. 5.43.185.191 19:32, 15 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Verbs with the same inflection, , )....
 * I don't think it is. Old Church Slavonic and Old East Slavic both attest the unpalatalised form iskǫ/isku alongside palatalised ištǫ/išču. 19:37, 15 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Slovenian has only iščem and Croatian has ištem/išćem, but with *plěskati Slovenian has pleskam/pleščem while Croatian has pljeskam/plješćem. So this can also be, the dual inflection *jьskǫ/jьščǫ in Proto-Slavic.5.43.185.191 19:44, 15 April 2014 (UTC)
 * The -m forms are not original, so they can't be used as evidence for Proto-Slavic. And the -am ending is even more of an innovation. 20:14, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

мачта
added the etymology of Dutch. How could the "s" have become "ч"? --WikiTiki89 17:26, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't know, but I'm not sure if it could derive from any other source than Germanic. Is there a possible Russian source? 17:47, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Ok, I consulted Vasmer and made this change. --WikiTiki89 18:01, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

May 2014
 * Hey! This is my first edit; Sorry if I'm messing it up. Anyway, Маща is a loving nickname for any girl named Maria in Russian culture. Perhaps there is a relation?
 * No source, sorry. Experience. --User:TWDtSoM 1:00, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

 * The name is, not Маща, which would sound quite bad for a girl's name :). No relation between and  --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 01:13, 15 May 2014 (UTC)
 * There are several loanwords in Slavic where s in the source language has become š, such as Polish < PSl.  < Latin, or the whole slew of Polish men's names ending in -sz taken from Latin names ending in -s (, , , , , , etc.). —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 10:54, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

drag
Hi, I recently added two possible etymologies for drag ("women's clothes worn by a man"): That it is derived from drag ("To pull along a surface") and that it comes from Yiddish trogn ("to wear"). A third suggestion that has been put forward at many places -- most notably Wikipedia -- is that it is a loan from Romani indraka, meaning skirt, coming into mainstream Englisch through the cant of fairground showmen. While I was not able to find a mention of "indraka" that was unrelated to the purported etymology, the ROMLEX Database has several obviously related Words: Latvian Romani andraka, jandraka and jendraka, Lithuanian Romani daraka and North Russian Romani indîraka, all meaning 'skirt'. If anyone of you knows a more reliable source for this etymology than a couple of online pages which quite obviously copied from eachother, we could include this possible etymology as well. To me it doesn't seem any less plausible then the other two suggestions.--Anonymest (talk) 12:15, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Do English words derive from Yiddish? --kc_kennylau (talk) 12:20, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
 * We don't have a Category:English terms derived from Polari, but that is almost certainly what this is. In fact, we don't seem to recognize the code  at all. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 12:41, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I seem to remember that there was a discussion about whether to recognize Polari as separate from English sometime in the past year, but I can't find it at the moment. Chuck Entz (talk) 13:21, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Whether it is or isn't, it can still be an etymology language. --WikiTiki89 14:44, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Perhaps Category talk:Polari language, including the RFDO discussion, is what you're remembering, Chuck. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 14:56, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I added it to Module:etymology language/data. --WikiTiki89 15:02, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
 * If it is no language on its own, but mainly a variety of English, wouldn't it be more accurate to speak of English words, that originally were Polari slang, rather than from words derived from Polari? In any case, there is an English (sub-)category English Polari slang and it includes words, like palone and polari ("to talk"), that are quintessantially Polari and were not borrowed into more widespread slang. If a new category "English words derived from Polari" is created, the relationship between the two should be clarified.--79.217.95.50 20:20, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, it is more appropriate to speak of terms or senses as being "", rather than to speak of something as derived "from the language"(!). Consider how many other slangs were the first registers of a particular language to use certain words, and how we treat those slangs: for example, AFAICT we don't have an etyl-only code for "originally Cambridge student slang", we use plain text to say that in entries like nargery. (There are probably not that many more attested Polari-derived terms than attested Cambridge-student-slang-derived terms).) Indeed, most of our Polari entries already handle things with context tags rather than . I think pld should be (re-)removed the etymology-only language-code module... - -sche (discuss) 02:20, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

barva, barwa
I think it's fairly certain that these languages got this word from some descendant of Germanic, but which one? Was it Old, Middle or New High German? Or maybe also (Middle) Low German? I think a "middle" language seems more likely, because the change f- > v- occurred by that time (which would explain why b- was borrowed rather than p-), and also because -w- > -b- had not yet occurred in High German. It's also more likely because all the Slavic languages eventually acquired /f/ as a phoneme, and this borrowing would have to pre-date that. 23:56, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Rejzek 2001 traces Czech barva to Middle High German varwe and indicates as possible the origin from Old High German far(a)wa. --Dan Polansky (talk) 06:11, 1 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I've just read a historical phonology of Slovene which mentions several German loanwords where /f/ was borrowed as /b/, and at least one Romance loanword ( < Latin ). AFAIK Latin /f/ never became /v/ in word-initial position in any Romance language, so a voiced phoneme in the source language may not actually be a necessary condition for phonemic replacement with /b/ in Slavic. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 14:46, 5 May 2014 (UTC)


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Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium/2014/May

yeast
An IP posted an inquiry at Talk:yeast about our etymology (and by extension, our Old English entries). While they were extremely confused about a lot of things, I suspect they were right about the correct Old English ancestor to yeast being gist, not giest.

For one thing, every English dictionary I've been able to check so far gives the OE term as gist, as do Bosworth-Toller and J. Clark Hall. I was able to track down one of B-T's cites in Google Books:.

On the other hand, Gerhard Köbler, (accurately) citing Pokorny p. 506, says giest.

The Dutch site, etymologiebank.nl, is mixed: their most recent source says "gist", but the older ones seem to all say "giest".

Does anyone have a definitive way to resolve this? Chuck Entz (talk) 00:58, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

 * Not a definitive way, but see this entry from the Middle English Dictionary with several alternative spellings for a word for yeast in Middle English. Among others gist is early and yeaste is late. DCDuring TALK 01:42, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

 * Last chance for anyone to say anything before I get rid of all references to Old English . Chuck Entz (talk) 14:01, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I can't find any reliable sources showing giest, only gist and gyst. giest makes sense though as an intermediate form between the two: gist would break into *giest before becoming gyst, but that's hypothetical. Leasnam (talk) 01:18, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

guide
Is the origin of guide (or French guider respectively) the preterite present or rather the full verb? The reason why I suspect that the macron has been mistakenly omitted here (from both the Frankish and the Proto-Germanic reconstruction – the mistake appears to go back to the Online Etymology Dictionary) is that the preterite present is never used in a sense like "to show the way", as far as I am aware. Nor would it be expected: Knowing (the way) is not the same as showing the way. The legal sense "accuse" of the full verb is plausibly derived from a meaning "indicate", in contrast (although I do not know if this meaning is actually attested in any Germanic language, as opposed to the well-attested legal sense). --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:53, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

ding, dinge (verb)
Are these different forms deriving from the same Old English/Germanic source? 17:50, 17 May 2014 (UTC)
 * ding from OE, probably yes. The etymology of dinge however, is usually regarded as unknown, but I wouldn't be surprised if it could be representative of a causative form ''*dengan". Leasnam (talk) 22:32, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

ambo
Should the PIE origin be instead? Since is its cognate... --kc_kennylau (talk) 02:25, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Looking at the etymology for the other Ancient Greek cognate,, shows the more likely version: . It's all mostly a matter of notation, anyway: *bʰ and *bh are the same thing as represented in two different systems. Likewise, *h₂ and *a are the same thing in this case according to laryngeal theory (pre-laryngeal notation might use *ɘ). Chuck Entz (talk) 03:57, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

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Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium/2014/June

ઇસ્પિતાલ
I'm doubtful of the English origin of Gujarati ઇસ્પિતાલ (ɪspɪt̪aːl). I believe this may actually be from the Old (or Middle?) Portuguese espital. My reasons are: Does anyone disagree or have other information on the topic? DerekWinters (talk) 17:11, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
 * The dental ત (t̪); most loans from English that contain a t (alveolar) become a retroflex (ʈ) in Gujarati. Ex. કીટલી (kiːʈliː) from kettle, ટિકિટ (ʈɪkɪʈ) from ticket, etc. However, it is a regular result from Portuguese words (which also have dentals or alveolars) (Ex. ઇસ્પાત (ɪspaːt̪) from espada (steel))
 * The initial ઇ (ɪ) is a regular result of Portuguese words with a leading e (Ex. ઇસ્પાત (ɪspaːt̪) from espada (steel), ઇસ્ત્રી (ɪst̪riː) from estirar (to iron)). The leading ho in the British English would probably result in a Gujarati (h)aː.
 * Finally, the stress in espital would fall on the final a, resulting in the lengthened aː found in the Gujarati. The stress in the English would be on the first syllable, lengthening that one in Gujarati.

gappen
Please see Talk:gappen. (I'm posting a pointer here because comments on isolated talk pages often go unnoticed.) - -sche (discuss) 01:11, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I think the poster is right. The sources collected at etymologiebank.nl are usually reliable, in particular M. Philippa's dictionary . 09:03, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
 * It's also really hard to see how ganef could become gappen. Yes, in the history of Hebrew *np became pp while *nep became nef, but that's surely irrelevant for a borrowing from Yiddish into Dutch. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 18:53, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Also, here the original Hebrew has b/v, not p. --WikiTiki89 19:20, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Gender of Slavic and Nordic herring
Russian is feminine, while other Slavic languages have it as masculine, for example, Polish, Serbo-Croatian. Lithuanian and Latvian  both seem to be masculine, but we don't have entries for them. Nordic languages have it either as common gender, such as Swedish, or feminine, such as Norwegian and Icelandic. Our Proto-Germanic entry claims it was neuter. I assume the Proto-Slavic form would have been and probably would have been masculine. The questions are, why does Russian have it as feminine? Why do we reconstruct neuter for Proto-Germanic when the Nordic languages have it as feminine? What was the gender in Old Norse (if it was not attested, then we should probably remove the mention in the etymology section of the Icelandic entry)? And finally, why does the Balto-Slavic gender differ from the Germanic gender? --WikiTiki89 19:18, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
 * The Serbo-Croatian form can't be descended from the same form as the Russian. đ/ђ exclusively derives from Proto-Slavic *ď < *dj, but this would give ž in Russian. 19:28, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Oh... Maybe they were reborrowed from West Slavic? --WikiTiki89 20:35, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Aren't most nouns that end in soft consonants feminine in Russian? Maybe this one became feminine over time by analogy. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 19:33, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Re: Aren't most nouns that end in soft consonants feminine in Russian? No, there are many masculines that end in soft consonants -, , , , , , , . With hissing consonants "ь" is used to distinguish feminines from masculine. Is that's why you probably think that only feminines can end in "ь"? --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 12:47, 7 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I didn't say only feminines can end in ь, I just said most nouns ending in ь are feminine. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 15:28, 7 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't know the statistics, but it feels like it's about half-and-half. But I'm sure there could have been quite a bit of confusion back and forth. --WikiTiki89 20:35, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
 * There are two different types of soft consonant. There is the "historically soft" type, which include j, š, č, ž, c, nj, lj, rj, not all of which are considered soft in modern Russian. Then there's the type that is palatalised in modern Russian because of a historical following front yer vowel, which did not palatalise the consonant in Proto-Slavic but did so only later in Old East Slavic. The nouns ending in the historically soft consonants are a different type from the nouns ending in "modern" soft consonants. The former belong to the Slavic soft o-stem nouns, while the latter are i-stem nouns. Soft o-stem nouns are masculine, while i-stem nouns are generally feminine (Proto-Slavic had some masculine i-stem nouns too, but these have been converted to o-stems in most Slavic languages, with some remnants). In this case, is an i-stem.  22:27, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Interestingly, is also a masculine i-stem. --WikiTiki89 02:43, 7 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I think Lithuanian is feminine. --Fsojic (talk) 22:32, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks, my source for that was very untrustworthy and I know very little about those languages. Of course that makes me less sure of the Proto-Slavic gender. --WikiTiki89 02:43, 7 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I can confirm that is feminine, as is . Interestingly, Cleasby-Vigfusson and Köbler both say Old Norse  is neuter (Köbler glosses it as the Tobias fish, apparently erroneously), while  is feminine. - -sche (discuss) 22:48, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
 * looks somewhat suspicious, because Germanic does not normally have "overlong" syllables consisting of a long vowel and two consonants, especially not if the first consonant is a sonorant (see Osthoff's law). So the only explanation that I know of is if there was historically an intervening vowel which underwent regular syncopation in Old Norse: *sīlVd-. 23:08, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

 * Alf Torp's old (1906) Etymologisk ordbog over det norske og det danske sprog says of "fra nord. stammer russ. selĭdĭ, seledka, lit. silkė, silkis (gjennem lilleruss.), opreus. sylecke, finsk silli". [//starling.rinet.ru/cgi-bin/response.cgi?root=config&morpho=0&basename=\data\ie\vasmer&first=1&off=&text_word=%D1%81%D0%B5%D0%BB%D1%8C%D0%B4%D1%8C&method_word=substring&ic_word=on&text_general=&method_general=substring&ic_general=on&text_origin=&method_origin=substring&ic_origin=on&text_trubachev=&method_trubachev=substring&ic_trubachev=on&text_editorial=&method_editorial=substring&ic_editorial=on&text_pages=&method_pages=substring&ic_pages=on&text_any=&method_any=substring&sort=word&ic_any=on Max Vasmer] also seems to consider s the Russian word to represent a borrowing from Norse. (And we currently treat Finnish  a loan from Swedish.) On Usenet, someone claims that de Vries suggests that  and  might derive from "parallel forms *sīðlō and *sīþlō[,] from *seitlo, connected with Lat. <saeculum>"; someone with access to de Vries' work could check this (it sounds strange to me). Köbler, and our entry [[sile]], derive the Norse words from a feminine proto-Germanic root . - -sche (discuss) 03:57, 7 June 2014 (UTC)
 * -þl- and -dl- do not normally become -ld in Old Norse. Compare for a parallel. The -ld- of Old Norse can only be explained as being inherited from -lVd-, or possibly -lVþ- (if the change -lþ- > -ll- occurred before syncope). So  cannot be the original source of this word, it would give Old Norse .  10:18, 7 June 2014 (UTC)
 * It did give Old Norse, is one of the attested Norse words/forms. (What is our source for ?) - -sche (discuss) 16:52, 7 June 2014 (UTC)
 * But was it feminine? A hypothetical would regularly become  in Old Norse, but decline as a feminine ō-stem. Although, it's also possible that u-mutation would occur here, resulting in . I don't know how systematic u-mutation of long í was.  17:01, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

 * To expand on my earlier mention of Vasmer: he [//dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/vasmer/47276/%D1%81%D0%B5%D0%BB%D1%8C%D0%B4%D1%8C writes] that not only the Russian word but also the Lithuanian and Latvian words were borrowed from Scandinavian, with the borrowing into Russian occurring in or before the 12th century "невероятно посредство саам. тер. sildte, вопреки Итконену"(!). - -sche (discuss) 05:52, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

Someone requested the page from de Vries on and. Enjoy. --Vahag (talk) 06:57, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Citing that and Vasmer, I've added an etymology section to . - -sche (discuss) 20:04, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

sain, saining
Do these English and Scots words derive from Latin via Old English, or via Old Irish? Please join in the discussion on Talk:saining. - -sche (discuss) 20:04, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

nenuphar
I'm having a rather hard time believing that the Persian نیلوفر (nīlūfar) came from the Sanskrit नीलोत्पल (nīlotpala) as there seem to be far too many letter discrepancies for it to have been borrowed. Unless the Persian term here is a reborrowing from Arabic (which can't handle the 'p'). Also, are there any attested intermediates between the Arabic and the English terms? Medieval Latin is mentioned in the etymology but no term is given. DerekWinters (talk) 22:32, 12 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I have created . Look at the Descendants section. --Vahag (talk) 09:01, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you for making this. I added some terms as well. However, I just have a few questions. Is an Ancient Greek term from Arabic possible chronologically? Also, the Byzantine Greek νούφαρο page states that it comes from an earlier νενούφαρο. Could this be a valid intermediate? And finally, I have a Pashto نيلوفر (nilofar) but I don't know where it would go. DerekWinters (talk) 18:03, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
 * The etymology in was copied from Λεξικό της Kοινής Nεοελληνικής. I don't think it is reliable and I do not find νενούφαρο in any dictionary. Borrowing from Arabic  is much more likely, as indeed stated by three sources: To Mείζoν Eλληνικό Λεξικό, Mέγα Λεξικό της Ελληνικής γλώσσας and Πολυλεξικό. As for Ancient Greek, it is attested only in Aristotle and is glossed in one Russian dictionary as “a kind of medicinal plant”. I do not know enough about the chronology of Arabic borrowings in Greek to comment. Pashto  should probably go under Persian. --Vahag (talk) 21:13, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/h₄eryós
Could somebody check what Mallory really says, please? The Ugaritic loanword claim makes no sense at all. Geographically who knows, but how can a PIE word be borrowed from a language first attested in the 14th century BC?! --Florian Blaschke (talk) 11:31, 14 June 2014 (UTC)
 * From, it appears that the claim is originally from Szemerényi, not Mallory. What gives?! --Florian Blaschke (talk) 11:37, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

hormone
Isn't hormone derived directly from ὁρμάω, ὁρμῶ and not from the noun ὁρμή? The form is pretty obviously the present participle ὁρμῶν, and the French link given in the article derives it from the participle rather than the derived noun as well. --Blarkh (talk) 11:09, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

alcanfor
I don't believe it is possible for the Spanish alcanfor to derive from the Arabic كافور (kāfūr). However, the initial al- does seem to indicate an Arabic borrowing. Does anyone know of any Arabic and/or Andalusian Arabic term that may be a predecessor? 71.178.189.4 05:31, 16 June 2014 (UTC)
 * This is borrowed from attested 🇨🇬, according to most sources. --Vahag (talk) 09:17, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

 * Why do you think it isn't possible for it to derive from ? Is it because of the extra -n-? --WikiTiki89 14:01, 16 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Sorry this is late, but yes, I didn't believe it to be from Arabic also because on the camphor page itself it states that the Medieval Latin term is camphora is also from Arabic, and I felt there may have been an intermediate. DerekWinters (talk) 03:16, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Oh and also, on the camphor page, it states that the Middle Persian term derived from the Malay kapur, and while the phonology seems adequate, the time period seems terribly off. Perhaps a Kawi or Old Malay word? I also believe that Persian traders didn't much come to Southeast Asia, but more Arabic traders did, as there are few if any Persian loanwords in these languages. Would a Pali or Prakrit language have possibly given derivation to the Middle Persian 𐭪𐭠𐭬𐭥𐭫 (kāpūr)?
 * Also, I believe I read somewhere that many regional words were taken into Pali and the Prakrit languages of the era and then, as Sanskrit was also used concurrently, the word was adopted into Sanskrit as well, but that because of the well known sound changes between Sanskrit and the Prakrits, the Sanskrit speakers added a hypercorrected 'r' in between. This may be the result of the Sanskrit कर्पुर (karpura). I believe it is good to note that the camphor laurel is not found on the Indian subcontinent natively

 * According to latest research (Mayrhofer), the word is of Austronesian origin (not modern Malay, of course). Sanskrit borrowed it, as did Middle Persian and Arabic. Mayrhofer says the variation kar- : kam- : ka- observed in the descendants should be explained by prefix-variation in Austronesian. The borrowing routes require further research, but I have built a tentative list in . --Vahag (talk) 11:08, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

 * Austronesian sounds pretty reasonable. However, I think it's unlikely that Medieval Latin borrowed directly from the Austronesian ancestor(s). Also, if alcanfor (Spanish) can derive from alkafúr (Andalusian) with a euphonic 'n', then it seems then more likely that the Middle Persian lent to the Byzantine Greek which in turn underwent an 'm' insertion (probably euphonically), which was then borrowed into Medieval Latin, leading to the entire host of European words (save the Iberian and a few others perhaps). And even if the ka- and kam- are just variations (which is possible), the kar- does not seem to be viable, as there seem to be no Austronesian or Austoasiatic daughters that demonstrate it. Only Sanskrit, which has been known to add in a hypercorrect 'r' when borrowing from its daughter languages to make the word sound more Sanskrit. The daughter languages were spoken concurrently, and the sound changes that occurred were known by the upper class which spoke both. The Prakrits simplified all of the conjuncts. This might help: http://www.academia.edu/472464/The_influence_of_Dravidian_on_Indo-Aryan_phonetics. Sorry about my Indic rant, I'm really into those languages right now. But otherwise, I think we're pretty good with camphor. Should we move the whole descendants list under the Proto-Austronesian *qapuR? DerekWinters (talk) 17:25, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

 * I don't think Medieval Latin and Byzantine Greek were borrowed directly from Austronesian, but since I had contradicting sources on the intermediaries, I preferred not to make any bold statements. Yes, we should move the descendants to . I have asked Wyang to provide sources on the latter, before it is created. --Vahag (talk) 19:07, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

muller
RFV of the etymology.

Am I descending into pareidolia, or is there a connection to or some other derivative of ? After all, there's not much distance, semantically, between "grind up" and "destroy" (the phrase "run through the mill" also comes to mind).

The arrangement of senses within the different etymologies needs to be cleaned up, too. Chuck Entz (talk) 13:47, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

 * A more prosaic explanation might be and . Dictionary.com also has a sense of mull "to make a mess or failure of", and a broader sense of muller "any of various mechanical devices for grinding", both of which we currently lack. In any case, the pronunciation with a /ʌ/ speaks against derivation from Müller, as does (as noted in the entry) the early attestation of the term. - -sche (discuss) 15:34, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

 * I've modified the entry to note the various theories, including derivation from either or two Germans or derivation from Romani. - -sche (discuss) 05:48, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/edinъ
Did this have a by-form ? The West Slavic forms look like they come from. I see OCS has a by-form, but that would give palatalized consonants in West Slavic (Polish *jedzien instead of ; Lower Sorbian *jeźen instead of , etc.). —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 20:54, 17 June 2014 (UTC)
 * All the South Slavic forms are consistent with . Maybe Proto-West Slavic developed, in the same manor that South Slavic developed . What does Upper Sorbian indicate? --WikiTiki89 21:38, 17 June 2014 (UTC)
 * There are other unusual things about this word as well. It's one of the words that shows alternation between initial o- and e-. This alternation occurs in several words in the Baltic group as well, and is (as far as I know) reconstructed back to Proto-Balto-Slavic times, although the exact conditioning of the alternation is still not known. This means, in any case, that must be reconstructed as an alternative form within Proto-Slavic.  22:09, 17 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I thought the e- > o- change was just in East Slavic, compare <  and  < . --WikiTiki89 22:28, 17 June 2014 (UTC)
 * There's a bit more at Proto-Balto-Slavic language. 22:36, 17 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't know that much about Upper Sorbian, but AFAICT would actually have to come from, which only Bulgarian  is consistent with and which no other language requires (since the Bulgarian can also come from ). The Bulgarian isn't actually consistent with , is it? Wouldn't that have given *еден or *едън? —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 07:07, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, you're right about Bulgarian. I overlooked it when I said that, but it is still consistent with, which we know existed. As a side note, Ukrainian is also consistent with but does not require . Also note that English  also had an anomalous sound change. --WikiTiki89 14:18, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Also note Polish which also points to . It seems that in West Slavic, the palatalization was simply lost. --WikiTiki89 14:20, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
 * The difference between y and i in Proto-Slavic wasn't one of palatalisation. The palatalisation was simply an allophonic consequence of a following front vowel. i was front, y was centre or maybe back. Etymologically, Slavic y goes back to pre-Slavic ū, or in some cases ūn or even ъj > yj. 15:05, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
 * In Proto-Slavic sure, but by Proto-West Slavic there was a correlation of front vowels with palatalized consonants and back vowels with nonpalatalized consonants. So say PS had two by-forms *edinъ and *edьnъ, which normally should have given *jedʲinъ and *jedʲьnъ in PWS. Then if for whatever sporadic, unlautgesetzlich reason, PWS decided to depalatalize the d in this one word, the syllable harmony rules would automatically back the vowels to accommodate the depalatalized d, yielding *jedynъ and *jedъnъ, from which all our West Slavic forms can (and some must) derive. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 15:36, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
 * What he^ said. --WikiTiki89 14:24, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

Riemen and remenʹ
I assume that the similarity in form and meaning between German and Russian  is not a coincidence. Is the Germanic word a loanword from Slavic, or is the Slavic word a loanword from Germanic? Or are they both descended from a PIE word, or both borrowed from some third language? —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 16:14, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

 * Some old Russian dictionaries (e.g. Chudinov's) do derive the Slavic word from Germanic, but [//starling.rinet.ru/cgi-bin/response.cgi?root=%2Fusr%2Flocal%2Fshare%2Fstarling%2Fmorpho&morpho=1&basename=morpho\vasmer\vasmer&first=1&off=&text_word=%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BC%D0%B5%CC%81%D0%BD%D1%8C&method_word=substring&ic_word=on&text_general=&method_general=substring&ic_general=on&text_origin=&method_origin=substring&ic_origin=on&text_trubachev=&method_trubachev=substring&ic_trubachev=on&text_editorial=&method_editorial=substring&ic_editorial=on&text_pages=&method_pages=substring&ic_pages=on&text_any=&method_any=substring&sort=word&ic_any=on Vasmer] writes: "Праслав. *rеmу, род. п. *rеmеnе. Ввиду ст.-слав. примеров [...] заимствование из герм. (ср. д.-в.-н. riumо "ремень", ср.-в.-н. rieme) невозможно. В противном случае ожидалось бы *rjumenь." — "Proto-Slav. *remy, gen. *remene. In light of OCS examples [...] a borrowing from Germ. (cf. OHG riumo "ремень", cf. [MHG?] rieme) is impossible. Otherwise, one would expect *rjumen."
 * In turn, [//www.dwds.de/?qu=Riemen Pfeifer] and [//www.koeblergerhard.de/ahd/ahd_r.html Köbler] trace the German word straight back through Proto-Germanic to a Proto-Indo-European root *reu̯ə-, related to Russian.
 * - -sche (discuss) 20:04, 20 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Is it possible to derive it from Middle Low German ? 21:32, 20 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Kluge gives Western Germanic *reumōn and Old English rēoma (beside Old High German riomo and Old Saxon riomo), but doesn't derive it from PIE. —Blarkh (talk) 08:56, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

લાજવર્દ
I just recently created a page on the Gujarati લાજવર્દ (lājvard) and I had assumed up until today that it had derived from the Sanskrit राजावर्त (rājāvarta) even though some of the sound changes were a bit strange. However, today I found that it most probably comes from the Persian لاژورد (lāžaward) or some related form, itself from Lajward, a place in Turkestan (as noted by etymonline.com under the word azure). My question here is that can anyone identify the relationship between the Persian term here and the Sanskrit term given above?

The sources I have say that the Persian is from the Sanskrit (which would be I believe somewhat consistent with known sound changes) while another states the opposite noting that the stone is not native to India.

Also, many sources use राजवर्त (rājavarta) and लाजवर्त (lājavarta) instead of राजावर्त (rājāvarta) which is used in some dictionaries and the Hindi and Marathi wikipedias. Normally, I would believe the dictionaries, but the first two seem more likely in light of the Persian term to be the real words, or all three may simply be variations of one another. Please help. Smettems (talk) 05:10, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

 * (pinging: Vahag, ZxxZxxZ, Dijan from workgroup ) Team Iranica, let's sexify . --Vahag (talk) 06:34, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

 * Ok, is ready for viewing. Sanskrit rājāvarta-, rājavarta-, lājavarta- are all attested variants. They are borrowed from Persian and reshaped folk-etymologically under the influence of, . See Mayrhofer. The Gujarati form is probably directly from Persian. --Vahag (talk) 09:48, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Conjugation of
If someone knows, please put the conjugation table for  (*smějǫ/*směaxъ), its table could also be used for verbs such as ', ', ... 95.178.143.16 07:48, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

or
' or '? Did Proto-Slavic had a sliding j between ě and -ati? Some reconstruct as *směati others as *smějati or *smьjati, the last is most likely incorrect, because ě is definitely in.
 * About Proto-Slavic says not to include prothetic j and v in page names, so I'd say the same should apply to predictable hiatus-breaking j as well. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 21:16, 26 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Are there any modern Slavic languages that don't have the internal /j/ in this word? (Not counting the regular elision in West Slavic) --WikiTiki89 21:29, 26 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Polish and Slovak; OCS had směati, smiěti, směěti. So is *směati better then *smějati? I would say that j wasn't in in the first place, or it was insecure. Une nymphe (talk) 21:33, 26 June 2014 (UTC)
 * In West Slavic languages, such as Polish and Slovak, elision of /j/ is a regular phenomenon, even if it was there in the first place, which is why they shouldn't be counted. --WikiTiki89 21:53, 26 June 2014 (UTC)
 * But Polish has and  so not true. Especially Polish should be used as an example.  Une nymphe (talk) 02:22, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Compare also Polish from . There is clearly elision here, so you can't say it's proof that the lack of /j/ survived. --WikiTiki89 16:46, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
 * This is proof, where j originally didn't existed there Polish has elision from,  from ,  from ... but  from ,  from ,  from .... So you see there where j is in Proto-Slavic there Polish has j, but there where is ěa, Polish has ia. This is more than a proof to me of primal nonexistence of j in words such as , , , , ... because if there were j Polish would have śmiejać, siejać, ziejać... or śmijać, sijać, zijać... Une nymphe (talk) 19:13, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
 * There's a detail you overlook here. The lack of -j- always occurs in verbs that originally had -ě-, while Polish keeps -j- when it's preceded by -y- or -i-. So your proof is not really proof until it can be ruled out that this is not a regular rule of sound change. 19:28, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
 * What is with Polish ' from '? or with present śmieję from śmiać... See also where j is original it stays, and therefore no elision. Une nymphe (talk) 20:25, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Here are some examples of regular loss of intervocalic /j/: <,  < . --WikiTiki89 20:36, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
 * But, this is also present in other Slavic tongs. So not limited to Polish. And also is from  and  is from  . So I'm not really sure about that this is some proof. Une nymphe (talk) 20:43, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

What is with j in ? Polish, Russian and OCS have oi (but OCS does not have j, so hence) not oji. Une nymphe (talk) 21:42, 26 June 2014 (UTC)
 * But morphology is different: ' is made of smě-ati whilst ' from doj-iti.
 * It should be noted that in Old Church Slavonic, usage of iotated letters was inconsistent, and ě often stood for ja, but never for a. So the form směěti unambiguously points to *smějati. smiěti seems like it should be read likewise, as *smijati. This looks a lot like the Ijekavian/Ikavian Serbo-Croatian reflex, . 22:40, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

*smijati, or *smьjati couldn't be, the frain is whether is *směati or smějati? Morphologically j is phonetic later add, I would also say that this isn't like *pьjati, *pijati which is made of *pьj-ati; cognate with *pojь, from where is clear that j isn't present in *směati. Une nymphe (talk) 01:09, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

 * I think the answer is pretty simple: It started out as *směati and later became smějati, probably still in Proto-Slavic. --WikiTiki89 01:36, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
 * It wouldn't if ě sounded like /ai̯/ then j wouldn't be needed. So j was added when ě started to shift. Une nymphe (talk) 02:09, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Not necessarily. /ai̯aː/ > /eːaː/ is easily possible. --WikiTiki89 02:13, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
 * A pre-Slavic -ajā- would become -oja- in Proto-Slavic anyway. Compare the difference between infinitive *-ovati (< *-aw-ātei) and present *-uje- (< *-au-je-). 11:44, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Similar to imperfect of *byti where we have *běaxъ, *běaše.... Also j isn't present. I would leave *směati and perhaps put smějati as alternative, like *nečьto, *něčьto or mьčь, *mečь for an example. Une nymphe (talk) 02:00, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
 * But the imperfect is never written with -ěě- as far as I know, which indicates that, uniquely, there really was a hiatus in this case. 02:05, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, probably later shift, otherwise elision would not had happened. Une nymphe (talk) 02:10, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

kibosh
Someone has tagged three etymologies with rfv-etymology. I clicked "+", which brought me here. The three etymologies are the following ones:

 * From the.
 * From the.
 * Some connection with Turkish bosh meaning empty.

My expectation is that the etymologies will be removed in a month or so unless sourcing is provided. I expect the result to be archived at Talk:kibosh, or at least linked to from Talk:kibosh. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:41, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Mr. OED says: "Origin obscure. (It has been stated to be Yiddish or Anglo-Hebraic: see N. & Q. 9th ser. VII. 10.)" (I have no idea what N. & Q. is) . --WikiTiki89 17:56, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Notes and Queries Chuck Entz (talk) 18:03, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I think I found the right issue, but you need a subscription to read it, which I don't have. --WikiTiki89 18:09, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

 * [[Image:Arrowred.png|15px]] Leo Rosten's New Joys of Yiddish (2010, ISBN 0307566048 has the following summary of other dictionaries' theories:
 * "::* The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology [...] says kibosh is of uncertain origin.
 * Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, third edition (1966), says that kibosh's ancestry is unknown.
 * The Oxford English Dictionary laconically says that kibosh is of 'heraldic' origin—which is of no help.
 * Eric Partridge, in his Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (1961), agrees with the OED (above) but says that 'to put the kibosh on', meaning to seal the doom of, comes from Yiddish. Why, I don't know; he offers no evidence.
 * Padraic Colum, the Irish poet, asserts that kibosh comes from Irish Gaelic cie báis, meaning 'cap of death'.
 * [... Rosten then discredits the suggestion that kibosh is an abbreviation of a Yiddish or Hebrew phrase for '18 British shekels'. ...]
 * Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language says of kibosh: 'earlier ... kybosh, prob. Yid.?', which puts it indecisively and proceeds to cite Germanic possibilities I find no more impressive. (Why should kiebe, which means 'carrion' in Middle High German, lead to kibosh?)
 * H. L. Mencken [...] did not stick his neck out anent kibosh's parentage [...].
 * William and Mary Morris, in their Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins (1962), repeat the Yiddish-origin and the Gaelic-origin attributions [...].
 * [...]
 * Julian Franklyn, author of A Dictionary of Rhyming Slang (1960), suggests that kibosh originated in the heraldic caboshed or caboched."
 * The last of those may explain what the OED meant when it said the word was 'heraldic'.
 * I would remove the mention of Hebrew and add a note to the effect of "Sometimes ascribed, unconvincingly, to Yiddish." - -sche (discuss) 18:47, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

 * The Slang Dictionary (1870) says " Kibosh also means one shilling and sixpence.", which is also confirmed by some other 19th century sources I found, but the OED does not have this sense, and I don't know how to go about look for citations. This 1874 edition of Notes and Queries says "but this word ["bosh"] is probably an abbreviation of the slang term kibosh or kybosh, doubtless corrupted from .*", which I think is an unlikely theory, but the footnote says "* In the sense of 1s. 6d., kibosh has been derived from the Hebrew.", so at least that one sense (if it in fact existed) is derived from Hebrew, and it is possible that the main sense is derived from the monetary sense. --WikiTiki89 19:27, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

 * I'm not yet convinced this derives from Hebrew; one source may say it (or some sense of it) does, but other sources have a number of other theories, asserted with equal confidence... Rosten's comments on the 'British coins' theory, which I mostly left out of the blockquote above, are:
 * "In Phrase and Word Origins, Alfred. H. Holt says that a ‘Mr. Loewe, who ought to know,’ traces kibosh to a Yiddish word ‘formed from four consonants, representing eighteen pence. When, at a small auction, an eager bidder jumped his offer to eighteen pence, he was said to have “put the kibosh” on his fellow-bidders.’ But I have not the faintest notion what those ‘four consonants’ could be or why they represented ‘eighteen-pence.’ One suggestion is that kibosh is an acronym composed of the initial letters of three Yiddish words for ‘18 British coins.’ In Hebrew, chai was often used to signify 18; the sh might by the initial sound of the word shekel; but this linguistic reconstruction falls down on the ‘b’ sound. It might stand for ‘British,’ but would not the acronym then be ‘kibrosh?’ The number 18 possessed magical properties, since the letter equivalents formed the word life. Thus, by extension, its use could presumably put the ‘hex’ on an opponent."
 * But a search for, restricted to pre-1900 works, turns up nothing. (Post-1900, it turns up hits where someone stopped a bid by putting the kibosh on it, i.e. the usual meaning, which doesn't help to verify the connection to British coins or bidding.) - -sche (discuss) 02:26, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

 * As for Padraic Colum's suggestion, cie is not a possible spelling of a word in any variety of Gaelic. The Irish word for death cap (as in the mushroom) is caidhp bháis (pronounced /kəɪpˠ wɑːʃ/), but the basis for claiming this is the source of kybosh seems to be mostly wishful thinking. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 21:28, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

*šč
Proto-Slavic words with *šč like, , ... I was wondering if there was perhaps t instead of č, so *št? OCS has just that štit, ješte, -ište... This would have much more sense, because č or k wouldn't shift to t, while t would shift to č, or am I wrong? Une nymphe (talk) 19:44, 28 June 2014 (UTC)
 * The regular outcome of -šče- in OCS and modern Bulgarian is -šte- (written -щє-). This -šče- can come from a variety of pre-Slavic sources, including: -ske-, -skje-, -skja- (= -skjo-), -stje-, -stja- (= -stjo-). 20:08, 28 June 2014 (UTC)
 * The change of [ʃtʃ] to [ʃt] is not phonologically unlikely at all; it's straightforward cluster simplification and/or dissimilation. It's important to remember that OCS is not Proto-Slavic; there are sound changes that OCS went through that make it distinct from Proto-Slavic, and *šč > št is one of them. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 21:20, 28 June 2014 (UTC)
 * What about Čakavian where is šć not šč? This would be if Proto-Slavic had stj or štj, perhaps similar with *notjь, where even older form is *noktjь, so it is posible that older form of *šč is is *skt or smomething like that, and then *št and then *šč. 5.43.170.59 23:06, 28 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Does Čakavian also have šč, alongside šć? If so, is there a regular correspondence with Pre-Slavic sequences? 23:57, 28 June 2014 (UTC)
 * piščan from as far as I know, and similar words.


text:
урчууд

Noun

 * Сарацины (Лалын хороолол) зах зээл ба олон гудамжтай нөгөө нь гар урчууд суудаг Хятадын хороолол.
 * Сарацины (Лалын хороолол) зах зээл ба олон гудамжтай нөгөө нь гар урчууд суудаг Хятадын хороолол.

title: урчууд


text:
Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium/2014/July

flick
Is it true that, as claimed on Flip book, a flip book is also sometimes called flick book? I just randomly wondered if, since a flip book is a primitive kind of film, the expression flick for a film might be derived from this. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 19:43, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Possibly, but I think it's more likely that it comes from, which old movies are wont to do. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 20:07, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

 * I guess the question is was "flick book" in common use in the time and place of the first attestation of "flick"? --WikiTiki89 21:59, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Effectively yes, I just wanted to throw the thought that crossed my mind out into the public here. But Angr's explanation makes sense too and is simpler. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:09, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

or
Possible Proto-Slavic word or  ('angel') from, from. This is possible to Proto-Slavic, as likely as Proto-Germanic.
 * I doubt it. SC đ/ђ is a regular palatalization of Greek /g/ before front vowels, so the only evidence for is the Czech, which could have simply been borrowed from SC instead. I find Polish  and Slovak  harder to explain, but I doubt they go back to PS (Belarusian  was probably borrowed directly from Polish). --WikiTiki89 15:21, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
 * In any case, Proto-Slavic did not allow closed syllables, so a cluster *-ndj- was not possible and must be of post-Slavic date. 15:45, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Not quite, SC does not have regular palatalization of Greek /g/ before front vowels, only standard Serbian does (and this too isn't consistent), but this is, either French or Italian influence. In Croatian ' from older ' and ' (Čak.), Slovenian ' and . In OCS we have (anďelъ) and  (agďelъ) alongside with.
 * I am proposing reconstruction . Une nymphe (talk) 18:38, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Why would a non-Christian people have a need to borrow terms for Christian concepts? 18:52, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

 * See Proto-Slavic. Proto-Slavic by definition is the period just before the Christianization of the Slavs. It is of course possible that this word was borrowed into Late Common Slavic, but we do not refer that as Proto-Slavic as far as I know. --WikiTiki89 20:01, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Same frain is why did Proto-Germanic borrowed, they were also pagans. Une nymphe (talk) 21:14, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Why is this a problem? I don't believe in UFOs, but I still have a word for them. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 22:02, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Cultures were far less homogenous than they are now. People generally didn't have much knowledge of cultures outside their own, and they probably didn't have a pressing need to talk about foreign religious concepts either. In fact, I would say that Proto-Slavic speakers had probably never even heard of Christianity except for a few maybe. In any case, Proto-Germanic had no word, it's a later borrowing. It must be, because Proto-Germanic was spoken in Old Latin times, before the Roman Empire and hence Christianity even existed. This is also shown by the fact that Gothic has two forms attested: and .  22:39, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
 * You might want to look at the etymology for angel. It looks like Leasnam's "early Germanic" got switched to "early Proto-Germanic" as templates were replaced with other templates, though it wasn't the best wording in the first place. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:43, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
 * UFO has two different meanings. UFOs in sense 1 clearly exist, sense 2 is what Angr seems to mean ... :-)
 * BTW, I've witnessed UFOs myself, although they looked too small to host aliens unless the aliens were really tiny. I've only learned of sky lanterns right now, that must be what they were. Although they were already prohibited back then in this part of Germany, I think. Hmm. But they sure looked like balloons with candles in them. I must add that it was already quite dark, that's why I was puzzled even though I never seriously contemplated the thought that they were alien spacecraft. :-) --Florian Blaschke (talk) 13:46, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, I meant "alien spacecraft", not "anything flying that you don't know what it is". I've seen sky lanterns here in Berlin too, even though they're almost certainly illegal. The first time I saw one it kind of freaked me out because I had never seen one before, so I didn't know what it was, and it was really dark so I couldn't see anything of it except this light floating slowly and mysteriously through the air. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 13:56, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
 * It was a whole swarm in my case, and its movement was completely consistent with miniature hot-air balloons, so considering your experience I'm virtually certain now that they were sky lanterns. Neat. I was only weirded out a little bit – the objects piqued my curiosity more than anything – because I soon figured out roughly what they were. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 14:20, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Apparently it was two years ago – my mother was with me and sighted the UFOs too. Sky lanterns were already explicitly forbidden at the time here. Still, I don't think gnomes from outer space are a better explanation. :-Þ Thanks for sharing your experience, Angr. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 02:59, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Origin of the instrument name "Jew's harp" in English and other languages
Origin of the instrument name "Jew's harp" in English and other languages

[ etymology, English Jew's harp ]

( A "Jew's harp" is a small musical instrument of great antiquity which is like a kazoo. )

Here's some ideas by me. I got a BA in Linguistics and work a lot with foreign languages and etymologies. I wrote this up, wanted to put it online, but couldn't find a good place where it would accessible. I'm going to try the Talk page for "Jew's harp", too, because it's empty and I might be the only person who cares and is qualified to have a say. Why "Jew's harp" ? It's just been on my mind and is interesting etymologically.

I think the answer might lie in foreign languages' terms for Jew's harp.

I think the phenomenon is limited only to English and Dutch, that it's phonetically (sound-wise) related to the French guimbarde *gwimbaarda and other Eurasian words for Jew's harp. I speculate that it went from something like

[ (Continental original, something like **gwimbaarda > (calque and or phonetic borrowing) *jaw-harp > *jaw-harp > *Jew-harp > Jew's harp

I think that this was adopted as a variant because the instrument is small, whereas a harp is much bigger, Jews being commonly regarded as stingy in Europe. Likewise, other English variant forms are "juice harp" and "jaw harp". Phonetic borrowings don't even have to make sense, look at eggplant (from Persian).

Wiktionary lists many of them. ( Wiktionary, "Jew's harp". > translation)

Most call it a "mouth drum". Only in Dutch do we get Jew's harp. In Germanic languages we see Danish: jødeharpe c : Jew-harp Dutch: mondharp f : mouth-harp German: Maultrommel (de) f : mouth-drum Icelandic: gyðingaharpa f, kjálkaharpa f, munntromma f x-harp, x-harp, mouth-drum Netherlands: mondharp m mouth-harp Norwegian: munnharpe mouth-harp Swedish: mungiga (sv) c mouth-x

When we look up "jaw" in Wiktionary, we find : Middle English jawe *dZaawa, jowe *dZowa, geowe *dZowa (my reconstructions) Middle Dutch kauwe : fish jaw Middle Dutch kouwe : mouth cavity dialectal German Ka:u, Keu : jaw, donkey jowl Irish gob : mouth

What was "Jew" in Middle English ? Wiktionary says Giw *Juu and Ju *Juu, which, not surprisingly, is the same as today's.

So then the variant form [ West-Germanic *Jew's-harp ] must have arise and given rise to modern English Jew's harp and Modern Dutch jødeharpe sometime between Proto-Germanic and today. If you go back far enough in time, the West Germanic peoples probably did not know that Jews existed, so maybe it's a Roman Empire onward thing.

This is just from the data given in Wiktionary.

Dwarfkingdom (talk) 01:51, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

 * I don't quite understand your comparison with eggplant. Could you please elaborate? Leasnam (talk) 12:14, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

 * Perhaps he/she means aubergine (= eggplant)? That has a mention of a Persian in the etymology. Equinox ◑ 13:16, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

 * The term "eggplant", itself isn't a phonetic borrowing- some varieties are white and actually look sort of like eggs. They're probably referring to aubergine, which is in the same stratum of borrowings from Arabic as orange and apricot. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:47, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/ablo
I don't speak any of the daughter languages, but there's quite a bit of this new entry that looks questionable. The main issue is highlighted by the fact that the descendants section is made up of nothing but redlinks- which doesn't seem to be a coincidence. If you look at the translation table for apple, the Slavic languages all seem to have reflexes of the derived form, not this term. One can deduce that it existed from the derived forms and their descendents- but are there any actual descendants of the un-suffixed form? Chuck Entz (talk) 04:13, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I have rfd'ed it. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 04:17, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
 * And now un-rdf'ed it again. So it is legit. Cool, wasn't aware of this etymon. What's interesting is that Balto-Slavic as a whole exhibits a lengthened vowel, unlike the other cognates: *ābōl- ~ **ābl- (else Lithuanian and Old Prussian would have †ab° and Slavic †obl°). The reconstruction given at does not reflect this fact. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 13:13, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
 * That's at work.  13:15, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Ah yes, d'oh, of course. So it was probably PBSl. *abōl- ~ *ābl- originally, but the short-vowel variant was not continued in Balto-Slavic. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 13:18, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Not everyone agrees that Winter's law only applied in closed syllables though. 13:30, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
 * True, but not everyone agrees that it even existed in the first place. I believe the closed-syllable interpretation is fairly widespread. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 14:02, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Maybe, but postulating a short-vowel version like you did in the etymology probably doesn't add anything, as it's not attested in Balto-Slavic and there is no linguistic consensus for the sound law that reconstructs it anyway. 14:07, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Ah, but the short-vowel version was there before I edited the page. I first added a macron and then undid this, adding the long-vowel variant stem as a parenthetical instead. Feel free to implement a different solution. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 14:24, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Old Croatian
I was wondering if we could put Old Croatian (11th-15th century) in, for i see we have Old Polish? If so, we would need to use new script; so called angular glagolitic script. I would very much like to contribute on that, for Old Croatian is very rich and diverse language, linguistically very similar to OCS. Une nymphe (talk) 02:11, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I thought that Old Croatian is OCS (or a dialect at least). --WikiTiki89 03:18, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * No, Old Croatian started as some kind form or variation of OCS, but early separated from OCS, here is exemple of | Vinodolski zakon ('Vinodol law') from 1288. Une nymphe (talk) 09:34, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Old Church Slavonic refers to it as the Croatian recension of OCS, and therefore not clearly distinct from OCS as a whole. 12:44, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Old Church Slavonic is essentially yet another polycentric language. For example, most "Old East Slavic" texts are really South Slavic with East Slavic influences. There are few materials in the vernacular. The situation is roughly analogous to Swiss Standard German vs. Swiss German, or Austrian German vs. the local Bavarian dialects. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 02:51, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Not true; Baška tablet, Povaljska listina... these are written in Croatian recension of OCS. Vinodolski zakon is written in seperate Croatian language, in it we have phonetic shifts unique to Croatian, grammar as well: ě - started to change into i and e, žd - is always j, št - is šć, verb dual is lost, syntax is different. Orthography is completely different. There is clearly separate (but similar, even so mutually comprehensible) South Slavic language. And, on my opinion, it deserves it's place in Wiktionary. Une nymphe (talk) 11:16, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
 * But it would have to be treated as a form of Old Serbo-Croatian, since the "Croatian" language didn't exist before it was invented in the 1990s. There is nothing "Croatian" about the language of Vinodol codex and Baška tablet. It is not ancestral to modern Croatian, and it is certainly not Croatian recension of OCS (apart from few Church Slavonicism in Baška tablet, which is a short monument anyway). --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 11:24, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Is this for real? I am seriously wondering if administrators here on Wiktionary are demonstrating such ignorance, not to mention some pathological fanaticism, how much of anything here on Wiktionary is trustworthy. Everyone on this planet knows that Croatian and Serbian merged from completely separate backgrounds; Serbs until 19th century didn't even write on Serbian. Croats have ten centuries of extraordinary rich literature on four different scripts and always called their language harvatski, hervatski, horvatski, hrvatski, illyrski, slovenski, slovinski. Entire notion of some union between Croatian and Serbian was an invention of 19th centuary. This term "Serbo-Croatian" was coined by Jacob Grimm, who was a very good friend of Vuk Karadžić who was famous for his notion Serbs All, and Everywhere!. What is this? How can anyone stand this? OK, if someone is for "Serbo-Croatian" (for his practical/ideological reasons), but all of this is pure nonsense, this is almost unseen linguo-historical revisionism par excellence. How can even be "Serbo-Croatian language" when there is not one historical document written on it. If this doesn't change in near future, I am very concern about trustworthiness of this entire project. Unbelievable. Une nymphe (talk) 11:51, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
 * We only follow modern linguistic consensus, which is that Serbo-Croatian is a single language. 12:05, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
 * @Une nymphe Everyone on this planet, really? Treating Serbo-Croatian language as one language is an explicit Wiktionary policy, supported by the majority of editors, it's based on various facts, such as shared 9*% of vocabulary. It's a fact. Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Montenegrins all speak this "invented" language "naš jezik". I will omit this discussion about the origins of the language name. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 12:08, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Croats can call "their" language whatever they like, it's still the same language used by Serbs. Nations were invented in the 19th century as well, so there was no such thing as Croats at the time that the monuments that you mention were written; Slavic was by far the most common autonym used. It is debatable to what extant regional literatures of the SC speech area written in various dialects and scripts before the 19th century can be treated as separate languages, though I'd prefer that it all be dumped under the Old Serbo-Croatian label, apart from Church Slavonic recensions which have their own distinct literatures, tradition, grammar, dictionaries and so on. I've added several SC words from Glagolitic attestations but in Latin script (from sources such as Muka svete Margarite and Svit se konča) which should probably be recategorized as "Old Serbo-Croatian" and transcribed back to Glagolitic, though that could be problematic due to lack of cursive Glagolitic fonts and the lack of support in Unicode for hundreds of Glagolitic ligatures which were commonly used.. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 12:19, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
 * The problem is that current standard Croatian isn't a continuation of most of pre-19th-century Croatian, nor is current standard Serbian a continuation of pre-19th-century Serbian, etc,:all of the modern standard languages are derived from one tiny sliver of the pre-19th-century diversity. Although what you call Old Croatian may have been spoken only by Croats and not by Serbs, it bears exactly the same relationship to current standard Serbian and current standard Bosnian as it does to current standard Croatian- so from the viewpoint of continuity, it could just as easily be called Old Serbian or Old Bosnian. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:36, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

 * FYI, this discussion has been copied and is being discussed in the Croatian Wikipedia: Hrvatski jezik na engleskoj Wikipediji i Wiktionaryju. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 23:26, 7 July 2014 (UTC)
 * From what I've read, the Croatian Wikipedia is very badly managed and has a high number of nationalist-leaning editors and sysops alike. There are plenty of stories on Wikipedia (I don't remember where) about people being blocked for not adhering to the "Croatian" POV. So if Une Nymphe is a regular there, that is reason for caution alone. 00:14, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
 * She is not a regular there, they are inviting her to join. She has taken it very personally, saying words like "this disgrace" (about our responses), "so ridiculous", "shameful", "we all speak, write and breathe a language that has no past, present and future (i.e. Croatian)"... --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 00:27, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

 * Woah, we're getting dissed by the Croatian Wikipedia? The site that one historian described as "only a tool used by its administrators to promote their own political agendas, giving false and distorted facts"? The site that's so biassed (nationalist and homophobic) that even the Croatian Minister of Education issued a statement advising pupils to use Wikipedia in English, not in Croatian, because "a large part of the content of the Croatian version of Wikipedia is not only dubious but also [contains] obvious forgeries"? (See Meta and en.WP's summaries.) Hahaha! Pardon me if I don't shed any tears. - -sche (discuss) 00:43, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

Vocative of *domъ
Why do we reconstruct as the vocative of ? Of all the languages that still have vocatives (at least of those that have declension tables on Wiktionary), only Polish has the vocative, while the others all point to. Also, the PIE vocative was, Lithuanian has , and Latvian has. --WikiTiki89 16:48, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
 * This noun is a u-stem, and u-stems have mostly disappeared as a distinct inflectional class in the Slavic languages. They have largely been converted into o-stems, with only a few older endings lingering in some nouns, like plurals in -ov and genitive singular in -u instead of -a. So the evidence of the modern Slavic languages is not very reliable. In Old Church Slavonic this class was still present in its inherited form, however, and OCS has the ending -u for the vocative of u-stems. 17:03, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Then there must be a mistake in our declension table for . --WikiTiki89 17:09, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Well, it's more likely that this form is not attested at all in any OCS texts. After all, it's not often that someone directly addresses a house. But for another u-stem noun, both and  are attested, at least according to Lunt's OCS grammar. He explicitly mentions that the former is an archaism while the latter is an innovation from the o-stems. So the process of converting u-stems to o-stems was already happening in OCS, and probably was in Proto-Slavic as well, but had not yet progressed as far. In any case, the ending -u is certainly the more original one. Its retention in Polish is certainly an archaism, judging from this bit from Polish morphology: "The masculines pan, syn ("son") and dom ("house") have -u in the locative singular rather than -ie, and also in the vocative (but pan has the regular panie)."  17:22, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
 * In the case of, Baltic evidence confirms the -u ending, but in the case of , it does not. Also, many Slavic languages have descendants of , but not of . --WikiTiki89 17:27, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Baltic has an o-stem inflection. All that means is that the noun was likely still a consonant stem at the time Slavic split off, and the two groups went in different directions. Baltic innovated an o-stem inflection, while Slavic went for u-stem inflection. So Baltic doesn't really help at all in this case. For it's different of course, as that was inherited from PIE as an u-stem and no innovation took place in either branch.  18:13, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
 * And I suppose sons are more frequently addressed in the vocative than houses are, and so synu was retained in more languages than domu. --WikiTiki89 18:16, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Something like that. Something similar happened to as well. It retained the effects of the Slavic first palatalisation in the vocative of many languages, even when this alternation was undone in all other nouns. Frequently-used forms tend to preserve irregularities the longest.  18:45, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
 * For curiosity's sake, can you give an example of a word where the consonant alternation in the vocative was undone? --WikiTiki89 18:50, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Not for the vocative specifically. But some languages have a stronger tendency towards levelling out the alternations than others. Slovene for example has no more consonant alternations in nouns and adjectives, except for a few irregular forms. It also lost the vocative though, so there are no examples there. I would imagine Bulgarian and Macedonian have a fair number of examples of this, as both retain the vocative but have radically simplified their declension system. 18:58, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
 * The reason I'm asking is because in Russian, even thought most consonant alternations in noun declensions have been dropped (such as in the prepositional case: rather than ), the vocative case, when preserved, retains the consonant alternation . --WikiTiki89 19:16, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

shebang
My mother, raised in the North Carolina Mountains by her grandparents who were adults during the American Civil War used the term "shebang" usually in a negative way such as if someone was lieing they were making up the whole shebang. I don't recall her ever using it in a positive fashion
 * + = . Anyway, it can be used either positively or negatively. Anyway, see our first definition. --WikiTiki89 15:28, 12 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Second definition, now that I've cleaned up the etymology slightly and re-ordered the senses by date of first attestation. - -sche (discuss) 17:33, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

PIE ,
Kroonen, de Vaan and Beekes all give the root for cow in Proto-Indo-European as, , which Kroonen derives to the root , compare Ancient Greek < , Lithuanian  <. Beekes and de Vaan state the circumflex in Greek implies a hiatus from a lost intervocalic laryngeal. de Vaan states the inflection goes back to a proterodynamic u-stem, "as revealed by Skt. obl. gav- from *gʷh₃ew-". Beekes states that a proterodynamic inflection is expected, but doesn't explain Sanskrit gáuh or gā́m.

Kroonen states the Germanic languages point to two root variants in Proto-Germanic, an originally ablauting nom. , oblique, from nom. , obl. .

Could we verify whether the root in question is Proto-Indo-European or (*gʷṓws)?
 * Ringe 2006 gives the reconstruction, and says it's an acrostatic noun. He also states that the oblique stem  was replaced by  in all descendants. Somehow I think that's a bit of a cop-out, because it conveniently explains away the lack of palatalisation in Indo-Iranian. An e-grade stem  would palatalise to  in Sanskrit. So it's a bit like saying "We know it must have existed, because... well it just did. There's no evidence, but it did, promise!"  23:37, 12 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Actually, now that I've had a while to sit down and think it out, I'm not really sure how *gʷh₃u- would give Proto-Germanic oblique *kū-, it should give *ku-, while the instrumental is the only form that could have become *kū; unless the instrumental form was leveled throughout the oblique. Also, to have developed nominative *kōz, the accusative and vocative forms would have had to become *kǭ and *kō(u), yes? Anglom (talk) 05:35, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

Proto-Slavic prepositions
Did the Proto-Slavic prepositions and  really end without a ъ? How do we know this? And how do we know that, , , and did? In (Cyrillic) OCS, for example, was almost always written as the single character, which is composed of an Cyrillic omega  and a , but no. So how do we know whether it was actually supposed to have one or not? --WikiTiki89 17:24, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Slavic words could not normally end in a consonant. But in the case of prepositions, the final consonant could be retained if it could be reanalysed as part of the next word. This is what happened with prepositions ending in -z or -s, but also in a few other cases. 17:30, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 * But in some cases, there is still a vowel there. Also, you didn't answer the other part of the question. --WikiTiki89 17:34, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 * The problem is that if it was, then the final consonant would have disappeared in the majority of cases just like it did with . But as far as I know there is no evidence anywhere of forms which lack the final -t. 17:38, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 * It could have been an epenthetic vowel, just like the one that was added to and . --WikiTiki89 17:47, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 * But those prepositions had no final vowel. They simply kept the final consonant in almost all cases because Slavic always allowed initial clusters to be extended with s- or z-. 17:49, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 * An epenthetic final vowel was added to them at some point (before words that started with an initial consonant cluster), as attested in every modern Slavic language as far as I know. I see no reason to believe that the epenthetic vowel was not added in the same period as the one added to, and I see no reason to believe that this period was later than Proto-Slavic. --WikiTiki89 17:54, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

 * When spoken all such prepositions formed a phonological unit together with the following word, so there were never actually any closed syllables. They never existed "on their own" with final -s or -z. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 13:01, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
 * But neither did the ones ending in -d(ъ) or -t(ъ). --WikiTiki89 17:48, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Proto-Semitic *kabkab-
Looking at the descendants, I'm wondering, on what basis do we reconstruct rather than ? It seems that the only language supporting the former is Ugaritic. --WikiTiki89 03:25, 19 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Probably based on the fact that [b] may lenite to [w], but normally [w] may not become [b] in that position. --Z 21:02, 19 July 2014 (UTC)
 * It is kbkb in Phoenician as well (, #3082), and the former reconstruction fits well for Akkadian kakkab-. --Z 21:25, 19 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Another equally plausible explanation is that *kabkab- was a result of leveling to the qalqal- paradigm. It seems strange to me that the /b/ would have irregularly lenited in so many languages, but not in others, for example in Hebrew, but not in Phoenician, which were very closely related languages. --WikiTiki89 13:04, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

芭芭雅嘎
"Transliteration of 🇨🇬, and Yaga, a probable diminutive of Jadwiga."

雅加婆婆
"雅加 Yǎjiā (Transliteration from Slavic Yaga, a probable diminutive of Jadwiga) + 婆婆 Pópo"

バーバ・ヤーガ
"From Slavic languages via 🇨🇬"

RFV of the etymologies, which all have their own odd ways of putting things.

This obviously can't be a transliteration into Chinese from either "Proto-Slavic" or "Slavic", and I'm not sure what's meant by "Slavic languages". It looks to me like the most reasonable guess for how it got to East Asia would be some combination of either borrowing from English, which got it from Russian, or directly from Russian.

By the way- the translation table at Baba Yaga looks fairly well-rounded, until you notice that it's mostly redlinks, with the rest mostly linking to Baba Yaga (English and Portuguese sections), Baba Jaga (Polish), and Баба-Яга (Russian). Some of the redlinks point to interesting alternative forms in West and South Slavic, which supports the assertion that this goes back to Common Slavic and weakens the assertion that Yaga comes from Jadwiga (which seems to be a Germanic borrowing). The Wikipedia article has some interesting theories as well.

Thoughts? Chuck Entz (talk) 01:37, 20 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I would say it's almost certainly a recent borrowing either from Russian or as an "international" term from an international language such as English/French/German or whatever. No other Slavic language had contact with the Far East. --WikiTiki89 13:10, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Etyfish
I came across an interesting project: Etyfish. The authors are attempting to explain the etymology of fish taxa beyond merely the source of the words or morphemes, including the not-always-obvious rationale for the use of the words and morphemes, eg, affinis (used as a specific epithet) to what? I hope to be able to include these in our etymologies, with reference credit to them, of course. They don't seem to have thought that through yet. DCDuring TALK 21:33, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

*dьlgъ
Why is this not ? --WikiTiki89 17:47, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Well, it's in OCS, forming a minimal pair with . —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 19:17, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

 * In East Slavic ьl = ъl as in TelT/TolT clusters, both yielding ol after jer vocalizations, if that's what's bothering you. See Shevelov p467. Developments of TьRT and TъRT in Lechitic are very complex and you can find them in the literature. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 19:46, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
 * That makes sense, just like *melko > moloko, but what about West Slavic and South Slavic (other than OCS)? --WikiTiki89 01:56, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
 * South Slavic merged the two yers in all environments at an early period, so they show the same reflexes in that group. I don't know about West Slavic but Ivan says the developments are complex. 07:28, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I thought only Serbo-Croatian did, not Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Slovene. --WikiTiki89 10:45, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Slovene certainly did. Now that I think about it, Bulgarian and Macedonian merged them only in some environments. One of those environments is next to l or r. 10:57, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
 * <, < . --WikiTiki89 11:12, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
 * But also < . The /ə/ vs. /a/ difference is not determined by the type of yer, but on accentual differences in early Slovene, similar to the distinction between ę and ą in Polish. Usually /a/ develops when it's lengthened under stress by a variety of late Slavic accentual changes, and /ə/ develops in all other cases. In most words, a former /a/ has been levelled out in favour of /ə/ though.  11:19, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Oh ok. I guess I'm satisfied now. --WikiTiki89 11:44, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
 * While we're talking about these words, is there any particular reason Proto-Slavic has to be a loanword from Germanic? Couldn't both  and  come from, just as Proto-Celtic  did? —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 21:27, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Sounds reasonable to me. --WikiTiki89 21:28, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
 * The problem is accounting for the ъ. Normally -l̥- develops into -il- in Balto-Slavic, not -ul-. 21:34, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
 * From Terence R. Carlton, Introduction to the Phonological History of the Slavic Languages, (Slavica 1990) p. 95–96: "The resulting vowel [when syllabic sonorants become vowel + consonant sequences in PSl.] is always either ŭ or ĭ, but we are still unable to define the conditions under which ŭ as opposed to ĭ arose. It is simply not known why, for example, r̥ should give ŭr in some roots but ĭr in others, thus, tr̥g- > tŭrg- vs. tr̥p- > tĭrp- (torg vs. terpet’ in modern R[ussian]). Most likely, the conditioning factors were the nature (whether labial, dental, etc.) of the consonant both preceding and following the syllabic sonant." Now that was written 24 years ago; have things changed since then? Do we now know why tr̥g- > tъrg-, but that explanation doesn't apply to ? Or is believed to be a loanword too? Otherwise, if there are several Slavic roots with ъr and ъl vocalism, I don't see any reason to assume  is borrowed rather than inherited. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 22:07, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Was *drugъ also an adjective in PS?
It seems almost all Slavic languages have an adjective descendant of this with the meaning "other" or "second". Perhaps this sense already existed in Proto-Slavic, in which case we should create it and split the descendants section accordingly. --WikiTiki89 15:13, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
 * It probably would have been. I wonder if the two senses could be related. 15:29, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
 * They definitely could be. I will split it out now. Do you think it had both senses "other" and "second" or just one of them? --WikiTiki89 15:31, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Probably both. I meant whether the "friend" sense is related to the "second/other" sense though. 15:33, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes I got that. I think they could be related (I can see a possible semantic connection), but I have no evidence as of yet. --WikiTiki89 15:40, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

Proto-Slavic *mъnoju
Why is the first person singular instrumental pronoun, rather than ? --WikiTiki89 14:40, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Probably a mistake. —CodeCat 15:12, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Excellent, fixed. --WikiTiki89 15:26, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

因
RFV of the etymology. rewrote the character etymology in. My dim recollection is that the previous etymology might be more correct, and this user's track record for correct edits isn't very good. Could someone more deeply intimate with Chinese etymologies have a look? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 17:00, 30 July 2014 (UTC)