Also, if anyone thinks that the etymologies I found are not correct, I'd
like to hear from you. The dictionaries where I found the connected words
("shoe", "sky" etc.) are both old, and I'm not sure if they are completely
trustworthy.
In modern Swedish, skugga means "shadow". This word, meaning "mirror",
"shadow" and "picture" made me interested. I looked it up in two books and got
two different etymologies. It could either derive from an IE root meaning "to
cover", which is also found in the word "shoe" and, possibly, in "sky" (I could
never have imagined that there was a connection between "shoe", "shadow" and
"sky"!). Or it could derive from a root meaning "to shine", "to shimmer".
Does anyone know more about this word and its connections in different
languages? What was the original meaning of Gothic "skuggva" - did it originally
mean "shadow"? If it didn't - what was the Gothic word for
"shadow"?