At first I thought: ap- is Old Persian for 'water'. Or any drink. The
rest maybe related to Persian zindah 'living'. The verb zistan 'to
live' was the same in Pahlavi (Sassanid era) as in New Persian. As a
LW in Greek, the adjacent [p] would have devoiced the [z] to [s].
Absinthe was used as a drug from ancient times. Pliny wrote: "They
drink to each other of it in the summer, thinking it to be a causer of
health."
So for its medicinal use, not to speak of druggie subculture, they
might have named it analogously to "aqua vitae" or "uisge beatha."
But I was unsatisfied with this line of speculation.
Another idea was deriving it from Persian ispand < Avestan spenta,
'sacred', the name of a plant (Peganum harmala) with psychoactive
properties, used in ancient Iranian rites and still used in Iran on
ceremonial occasions. It grows as a shrub in semiarid environments
and resembles Artemisia spp., including wormwood and sagebrush.
van Dale's Dutch etymological dictionary relates absinth to Persian
espand and Georgian abzinda. One of the many Persian loanwords in
Georgian? Metathesis of -sp-/-ps- is not unknown; English wasp,
Italian vespa came from PIE *wopsa.
Neither of these is really satisfying. Does anyone have any idea if,
or how, apsinthion could be derived from Persian? I wonder where Eric
Partridge got that idea.
--- In cybalist@..., john_monastra@... wrote:
> > Apsinthos, Apsynthos (Dion., Steph. Byz.) - a frontier river and a
> > main settlement of the tribe of Apsinthioi (Hdt.) to the north of
> the
> > Thracian Chersones (modern Galipoli peninsula); Apsinthis
> (Apsynthis)
> > (Strab., Steph. Byz.) - the country of the same tribe. The name
is
> > linked with apsinthion `wormwood', a word thought to be of
Pelasgian
> > origin in the Greek language, or with the Illyrian river name
Apsus,
> > derived from the IE *a^p- respectively *ab- `water, river'.
>
> Partridge, in Origins, derives apsinthion from Old Persian, but
cites
> no etymon. What Old Persian word could he have been thinking of?
> What was his source, I wonder? I could see ap- 'water' in there,
but
> would like to know what Persian connection has been postulated for
> this word, if any.---