From: tgpedersen
Message: 46128
Date: 2006-09-19
>And if the word was originally an adjective meaning "wild" (in
> This is all very confusing semantically. Can we find a subsuming
> sense for all this? Yes, its "nature, the chaotic and disgusting
> opponent of culture". I think the words for "grouse" and
> "ptarmigan" were once adjectives meaning "wild(-colored)"
> describing, as they saw it, the wild cousin of their domesticated
> fowl (cf. Danish 'agerhøne'). The adjectives meaning "reddish,
> striped" (cf. 'rust') were meant to describe foodstuff in its
> "natural" unpreserved state, full of rot, maggots and decay
> (which, very unscientifically, I assumed to be a Southern
> European attitude to Nature).
>
> (On a similar use of an adjective, cf PIE *g^omb- "plug, tooth"
> leading to the more specific *g^omb- edent- "eating plug" ->
> *edent- "tooth" (and not "eating one"!))
>
> And BTW, we should include
> *wl.kW-os "wolf"
> *wl.p-es "fox"
> lynx
> all animals of darkness and destruction, 'robbers'
>
> Obviously this is a 'frontier' word. The fact it is not
> reconstructible in PIE shows it must be a LBK-Rössen frontier
> word, something to do with the mysterious hinterlands they
> traded with. Surpring that it is so little distorted, the
> LBK dialects must have been rather similar.
>