Let me offer you some more food for
thought. An alternative term for "mate with, cover (perhaps especially of
animals)" seems to have been *h1org^he- (an o-grade present of the type for
which something like 3sg. *h1org^h-ei, pl. *h1rg^h-énti, mediopass.
h1rg^h-ór is reconstructed in the recent literature. The original meaning
is supposed to survive in Hittite, while the other daughter languages have
something like "rage", "move rhythmically" (Greek orkheo: 'cause to dance',
orkheomai 'dance; shake, leap', hence orchestra). The corresponding noun is
*h1org^h-i-s 'testicle, scrotum, male genitals'.
*pes-es- is the number one term for
"penis", hence the quite widespread derivative *pes-no- 'man, male'. For female
private parts a number of terms can be reconstructed, probably due to early
regional variation, semantic contamination and tabooistic distortion. The
variants *kut-, *put- and *kup- (with extensions, e.g. *kut-so-s, *kut-(s)no-s
or *kup-no-s, *put-o-s, *kup-o-s) are all attested and it's quite impossible to
tell which is the "original" root. They can all be connected with homophonous
roots (e.g. *kut- with *kut-o-s 'skin, leather', related to Latin cutis, English
hide, etc., which suggests a euphemism like "leather bag"), but such
connections, even if real, may well have resulted from secondary
associations.
I've never heard of *gWi:bHos, but I'll
have a look at it. If genuine, it might be interesting. But Germanic *wi:ban
can't derive from anything with initial *gW- (which would have ended up as
*kw-).
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, December 19, 2000 1:09
AM
Subject: Re: [tied] The sexual life of the
IEs
Absolutely no in-depth stuff on IE
sexuality. Now that I'm aware of /oipho:/ and /yabhati/, I might be able to
chance at something.
... I wonder if it could have anything to
do with *gwi:bh- that the American Heritage site lists. I know that the
phonetics are not perfect at all but then, these sorts of terms are often
corrupted over time like the word "cunt" and Chaucerian "queynte" or "arse"
versus "ass".
... Interestingly, according to the site,
*gwi:bh- is only seen in Tocharian and Germanic. This distribution seems to
complement the "eastern" *yebh-.