From: Rick McCallister
Message: 59156
Date: 2008-06-09
>Related to bouffe?
> W. Meyer-Lübke appears to have lumped four
> phonetically and lexically
> distinct items into his Romance lemma #878,
> <baf(f)a>, which he
> regards as a Schallwort. I propose the following
> tentative
> subdivision:
>
> 1. *bafa 'piffle, humbug' vel sim., whence
> Provençal
> <bafa> 'scoffing, mocking, derision', Abruzzese
> <abbafá> 'to deride,
> ridicule', etc.; also probably French <bafouer> 'to
> scoff at'. This
> may well be a genuine Schallwort.
>This seems like it is somehow related to Spanish vapor
> 2. *banfus, *ba:fus 'dank, sultry, oppressive',
> whence Lucchese
> <banfa> 'oppression, anguish, anxiety', Milanese
> <banfá> 'to pant,
> gasp', etc. (listed by M.-L. under his #932, <banf>,
> another
> Schallwort); Romagnole <bafa> 'sultriness',
> Portuguese <bafo> 'steam,
> breath', Neapolitan <abbafá> 'to breathe with
> difficulty', etc. This
> can be understood as a Latin borrowing from P-Italic
> *banfo-,
> regularly from PIE *gwn.dho-, with the normal grade
> *gwendh- seen in
> Greek <bénthos> 'sea-bottom; great depth'. These
> neuters in -es-/-os
> typically indicate the concrete result of an action,
> so the original
> meaning of *gwendh- was perhaps 'to flood, overwhelm
> with water',
> with semantic devaluation of *gwn.dho- from
> 'flooded, overwhelmed'
> to 'soaked, moistened, damp' in Italic. (A similar
> devaluation
> appears in Avestan <napta> 'damp, humid, moist'; the
> original strong
> sense of *nep- is found in Umbrian <nepitu>
> 'overwhelm with water!'
> vel sim. and *Neptu:nos, originally the Italic god
> of flooding rivers
> (Latin <Neptu:nus>, Umbrian *Nehtuns borrowed into
> Etruscan as
> <Nethuns>), from the /u/-stem *neptus 'flood'.)
> With *banfus,
> preservation of -nf- only in NW Italian dialects
> probably reflects a
> local feature of spoken Late Latin.
> 3. <bafer> 'grossus, ferinus, agrestis' (glosses),There is a Southern Italian word bafa, baffa
> whence French
> <bâfre> 'greedy eating', Piemontese <bafra> 'full
> belly', etc. This
> is likely another P-Italic loanword to Latin. The
> PIE root is
> possibly *gweH2dh-, *gwa:dh- 'to sink, submerge',
> whence Greek
> <bathús> 'deep, thick, abundant', Sanskrit
> <ga:dháh.> 'deep, stout,
> strong', <ga:háh.> 'depth, interior', <gáhana->,
> <gáhvara-> 'deep,
> thick'; 'depth, chasm, thicket'. Of the senses
> glossed for
> <bafer>, 'grossus' is easily enough 'thick', while
> 'ferinus'
> and 'agrestis' perhaps represent 'pertaining to the
> deep woods',
> hence 'savage, wild'. Lithuanian <gùdras> 'sly,
> clever, cunning', if
> derived from *gwadh-rós, could be a direct cognate
> of <bafer>, in
> which case the Baltic sense presumably arose
> metaphorically, 'deep in
> craftiness, resourcefully deep', or the like.
> Etymologizing <bafer>
> is so difficult that Ernout-Meillet in the DELL do
> not even attempt
> it; "dialectal et d'origine obscure" is all they
> have to say.
>
> 4. *baffus 'large, round, thick', whence Old
> Lombardic <baffo>,
> <baffa> 'side of bacon', Sicilian <baffa> 'pumpkin;
> clump of grass;
> type of flask', etc.; probably Middle French <baffe>
> 'fish-trap'
> (from its shape) and French <baffouer> 'to lace up,
> cord up' (from
> the act of lacing up a fish-trap). This could have
> been extracted
> from a hypocoristic noun *baffa 'large round object,
> large gourd' vel
> sim. formed regularly from some derivative of
> <bafer> above. In fact
> M.-L. has Sicilian/Calabrian <buffa> 'toad' listed
> under his #1373
> (1), <buff>, yet another Schallwort, when it
> probably belongs under
> #1374, <bu:fo:>, as the hypocoristic of a diminutive
> or other
> derivative, 'dear little toad' or the like.
>