Re: Odp: Odp: Glen acknowledges Agricola as masculine, Mea culpa

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 1074
Date: 2000-01-23

 
----- Original Message -----
From: Marc Verhaegen
To: cybalist@egroups.com
Sent: Sunday, January 23, 2000 9:13 AM
Subject: [cybalist] Re: Odp: Glen acknowledges Agricola as masculine, Mea culpa

 
>>>It's the same root as in *kWe-kWl-o- 'wheel', but *kWel- meant 'go round
in circles', not 'turn' in the sense you suggest. With so many languages at
your fingertips you should know that Latin colare means 'cultivate, tend,
attend to'. It may also mean 'till', but the original sense was 'go
about/around sth'. Piotr

>>Piotr, it's not colare AFAIK, but colere (cultura etc.).     Marc

("Colare" means "to sieve", derived from "colum", perhaps from the same
root: what has to be sieved must go round.)

>Gerry here:  I have a question for Marc and Piotr.  If the root in question
has the meaning of wheel in the sense of going around in circles, the
meaning of tilling or cultivating (i.e. agricola which is *masculine*) and
cultura (possibly in the sense of *culture*) is there a connection in
meaning between wheel and culture?  .... Gerry

Perhaps the connection is this: going round on a field in circles (eg, for
sowing) is bringing it in culture? or else: did the Romans have wheeled
ploughs? No doubt Piotr will know.

Marc
Cultura is a Latin word, a nominal derivative of colere.
 
Colere could mean (Cassel's Latin & English distionary):
cultivate, till, tend (plants, fields, animals);
dwell in, inhabit (a place);
take care of, attend to, foster, honour, worship, court.
 
Hence cultus 'tilling, cultivation, tending; care, careful treatment; (cultus deorum) reverence, worship (> English cult) ; (cultus animi) training, education; refinement, cilture, civilisation';
 
cultura 'tilling (> agriculture), culture (> English bacterial/tissue culture etc.), cultivation, husbandry; (cultura animi) [spiritual, mental] culture, cultivation; (cultura potentis amici) courting of.
 
Connect them as you will. My proposal is that *kWel 'revolve' is the best starting piont and that the other meanings developed from 'going about/around' > metaphorically 'take care of'. I can see analogous semantic developments in most of the languages I'm familiar with, including English ('go about one's work').
 
Another well-known PIE root meaning 'turn (about, over, back, ...)' (also 'upset, overthrow, change, exchange, twist, ply, ...') is *wert. My impression is that a clod of earth could be *wrt-tó- rather than *kWl-tó-.
 
Piotr