gard
I would have eventually posted something on this root, but its sooner
rather than later.
*ghórdhos (*ghórtos ~ *ghórdhos) is how EIEC has it (under
"Fence"). The semantic space is better expressed by enclosure,
enclosed
place/space. Reflexes appear in well-nigh every known branch of IE. It
is indisputably PIE.
-
Celtic: Old Irish: gort, 'standing crop'; Welsh
garth,
'pen, fold' (also English 'garth', the landscaped cloister courtyard of
a convent or monastery).
-
Latin: hortus, 'garden' (thence 'horticulture'),
cohors,
cohort, 'enclosure, yard, cattle pen; unit of the Roman Legion
(presumably from the 'yard' where they exercised in early republican
days).
-
Greek: Xórtos, 'enclosed space, feeding yard'. AHD3
conjectures
khoros, 'dancing ground', thence Terpsichore, chorus, etc.
-
Germanic: Old Norse garðar (plural), 'fence, hedge,
court'; Old English geard, 'enclosure, yard' (thence 'yard');
ortgeard,
'orchard' (literally, 'fruit-yard', thence 'orchard'). Old High German
garto 'garden' (thence, via French, English 'garden'). Gothic
gards,
'house, household, court' (said to be from garda,
'household').
The Norse gods live at Asgard. The Miðgarð Serpent only needs to be
mentioned
here. A garðar encloses Hel.
-
Balto-Slavic: Lithuanian gardas, 'fence, fold, pen'. Old
Church Slavonic gradu, 'town, city'. Russian górod,
'town,
city' (Russian has, by metathesis obtained both -grad and
-gorod
in city names).
-
Albanian: gardh, 'fence, enclosure'.
-
Phrygian: gordum, 'city' (as with 'Gordium' and the
Gordian
knot).
-
Anatolian: Hittite gurtas, citadel'. Luvian gurta-,
'citadel'.
-
Indo-Iranian: Avestan g@...@ða-, 'cave housing demons'. The
English renditions vary, but the place Cyrus the Great came from is
Parsagarda,
Pasargadae, etc: 'Persian place'. Old Indic ghra (from
grdha-),
'house, habitation, home'. EIEC gives an impossible to transcribe Old
Indic
compound that compares to the above 'cave housing demons', 'house of
clay',
where one goes after death.
-
Tocharian B: kerciyi (plural), 'palace'.
The list of words English has from this root is extensive, as the above
listing indicates; 'girt' and 'girdle' should also be mentioned,
and especially the verb 'to gird', which is apparently the only verb
attested
in the group. It's suggested that palatalized forms are found in Old
Prussian
sardis, 'fence'; Lithuanian
zardis, 'corral',
zardas,
'drying rack (for grain)'.
The sense is an enclosed space of some sort, one always associated
with
human endeavors, and from there a number of extensions, everything from
a fortified settlement (Novgorod, Leningrad) to a garden, a yard, and
orchards,
to kindergartens and cattle pens. It's a fence, a wall, a palisade, and
the area girded by such things.
My own last name does not readily translate from Norwegian into
English.
Norwegian øde seems equivalent to German öde and
means 'empty, vacant, abandoned, deserted, desolate'. Odegard means
'abandoned
or derelict farm'.
Humm. Horticultural Mars of the Abandoned Farm. The god moved to the
city and joined the corhorts of the legions.
Mark Odegard.