Danny, Mark and all:
In case you should wonder what Slavic words for
'wildcat' I alluded to in my response to Danny's cat query, I meant Polish
Zbik (Z = "zh") and zdeb (the
latter is a now rare dialectal word meaning either a wildcat or a particularly
ferocious domestic tomcat). I'm not sure if they are common Slavic. The Russian
and Czech 'wildcat' terms I'm aware of are, respectively, lesnaja koSka
(= 'wood cat') and koCka divoká (= 'wild cat') -- both
evidently new terms, koSka/koCka being local
diminutives of all-Slavic kot. Simona, can you help me
here?
I've got no Slavic etymological dictionary at
hand, but IF the two Polish words are related to each other AND derive from
something Proto-Slavic, then that prototype may have been
*stUb- with hypothetical Old Polish *steb,
Gen. *stba [zdba] levelled out to
zdeb, zdeba, and a diminutive formation
*stUb-ik- giving *zdbik >
*zbik > z'bik > hypercorrect
*Zbik. I'm only guessing here and may well be on the wrong
track. Still, if anyone feels like going on an IE wildcat chase,
**stubH- might be worth keeping in mind.
BTW, the Lithuanian word for 'wildcat' is
vilpiSys, as far as I know. The word is obviously somehow
related to Latin volpe:s, Greek alo:pe:ks,
Armenian aLue:s 'fox' and presumably to Skt.
lopa:s'a- 'jackal', but these compound-looking words don't
match up well enough for a satisfactory reconstruction to be possible
(*xwl-pek'- ~ *xlou-pek'- related via
metathesis and distorted even further in the individual branches??). Anyway,
Lithuanian clearly reflects an old 'fox' term with a semantic
shift.
A few years ago the reconstruction
*tak'Tos (T = "thorn") has been suggested for
'badger', but it remains tentative, though brilliantly supported by plausible
cognates ranging from Celtic to Anatolian. If anyone wants to discuss IE fauna,
I'm always game.
Piotr