From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 18099
Date: 2003-01-25
----- Original Message -----
From: "alex_lycos" <altamix@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, January 25, 2003 7:31 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Green
> The only supposed word I know is the celtic *wird-?? = green As I posted in an another mail, I got the proto-celtic roots from http://www.aber.ac.uk/~awcwww/s/p5_lexicon.html
Celtic has the well-known 'grue' ('green/blue/grey') term *glasto- and seems to have lacked a specific basic term for 'green'. *wird-, if real (the compilers of the list must have had doubts about it; they surely didn't give it two question marks for nothing), looks rather odd for proto-Celtic, and phonological considerations rule out a reflect PIE *werdH-. Without being shown the evidence I can only say that we are most probably dealing with Lat. vir(i)dis borrowed into whatever Celtic language it appears in. I can guess that Welsh gwyrdd is supposed to be the chief witness, but I have little doubt that this particular word is of Latin origin.
Piotr