New answers tagged etymology
5
The etymology of ἔλδωρ/ἐέλδωρ is difficult, but it almost certainly doesn't contain the agent suffix -τωρ.
Beekes and LIV both reconstruct a *h₁u̯eld- which would have no cognates outside Greek (which makes positing a PIE root rather moot). Chantraine connects it with Latin velle, from PIE *u̯el- or *u̯elh₁-; in this case the -d- would be a "root ...
9
This sounds like folk etymology to me. I'm not aware of any word *commensa, and the formation looks odd: prepositional prefixes aren't as common on nouns, and surely "together-table" would be expressed with an adjective? If anything I'd expect a verb *commensāre, "sit at a table together".
The etymology I'm familiar with says "...
7
What a coincidence, but they're actually unrelated.
ἄρσην ("male") is the Greek form of an old Proto-Indo-European word *uers-n-, with plenty of cognates in IE languages. It is actually related to the Latin verres 'ram' and other words in Sanskrit, Armenian, and Lithuanian referring to the male of an animal's species.
Meanwhile, ἄρσις comes from ...
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There's evidence for a broader Greek sound change *-Tw- > -TT- (where T = voiceless stop), of which ἵππος would be an example. A couple of relevant data points:
The change *-tw- > -ττ-~-σσ- is widely accepted, as in
τέτταρες~τἐσσαρες : quattuor, dialectal ἥμισσον "half" < *ἡμιτϝ-ον.
The geminate of πέλεκκον "axe-handle" (from ...
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Here's what Buck's Comparative grammar of Greek and Latin, retained in Sihler's 1995 reworking, has to say about it:
Greek is the only centum language (so called, II) attesting a contrast between reflexes of *ḱw and *kʷ. Although the notion that *ḱw > G ππ distinct from *kʷ > π is reasonable on its face, the only obvious evidence for it is G ἵππος, ...
1
I know that Germanica non leguntur in some quarters but anyway,
Fritz and Meier-Brügger 2021 (10th ed.), section G506 (pp. 69-71), btw this is a popular introductory textbook:
"Für equus bedeutet dies, dass vom Lat. aus nicht zu entscheiden ist, ob in diesem Fall -qu- auf *-ku̯ oder *-k̑u̯ zurückgeht. Das Iir. macht in unserem Fall die Entscheidung für *...
0
Not an answer, but FWIW here is Lejeune's discussion in Phonétique historique du grec.
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