*meng- & *mer-

*meng- ‘pretty, beautiful; useful thing’. Only nominal. 1. Alb.
<mangë> ‘scutcher, brunch, sleeve’. 2. Diminutive form <mëng-
ore> ‘double-breasted waistcoat decorated with gold braid and long
sleeves slung behind the arms rather then worm’: Skt
mang’ala ‘felicity, luck, good omen’ (cf. Alb. <me i nxjerrë
mangët ‘to do beauty and lucky something, to succeed ’). 3. <mëng-
ër> diminutive form of <mangë/mëngë> ‘wooden trough; special tool
for squeezing the olives for oil; wooden vessel for squeezing the
grape in it’: Gr. manganon, Lat. manganum ‘engine’: MHG mange etc.
Supposed Latin form manicae couldn’t explain the lack of
palatalization of velar, followed by front vowel, nor its very broad
semantic field. (Pokorny meng- 731.)

*mer- ‘to plait, bind; rope’. 1. Alb. <mërthej/mbërthej> ‘to clasp,
enchain, hook, clench, brace’ probably from compound form *mer +
*dheH3-n-yo, where *dheH3- is o-grade form of *dhe:- ‘to set, put’
and diathematic suffix â€"n-yo. Other possibility is extended form in
*merg’h-, for Greek â€"kh- corresponds almost to Alb. /d/ and PAlb
form to be *merd- and based in Greek brokhos ‘cord, hook, ling’
looks much probable. 2. Deminutive form in â€"skë is
<mbërtheckë> ‘hasp, pin, safety-pin, hook-and-eye’. 3. Antonymic
form <zbërthej> ‘pull apart, disintegrate, break down, decompose’
seems to be from form with homorganic /b/. 4. <kapërthej> ‘to
clutch, entangle, bind’; <kapërthen duart> ‘to intertwine one’s
fingers’ from further prefixed form ka-bër-thenj: Gr mermi:s, -
thos ‘filament’, merinthos ‘band’: MIr braga ‘prisoner’: Sl
mrezha ‘net’. (Pokorny 1. mer- 733, dhe:- 235.)
Note: Çabej thinks that Alb. <mbërthej> is a variant form of
<mbath>, that I found not plausible, as well as Orel’s derivation of
<birth> ‘pimple’, according to him a diminutive of <birq> ‘heap,
heap of sand, sand-dune’, until Meyer treats it as a loan from Lat
invertere.

Anny help?

Konushevci