--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> Skt. lip- (limpati) 'smear, anoint, pollute' might perhaps work.
One would expect Proto-Iranian *rip- (I don't know if it's attested
in Iranian), with *ri- > *li- in the lambdicising dialect in
question. The underlying IE root is *leip- 'stick, adhere; fat' (as
in Slavic *le^piti), with fairly general and varied semantics. Even
Eng. life, live (< *li:b- < *leip-) are thought by many authors to
belong here, via something like 'stick' > 'stay, remain' [Goth. bi-
leiban, Germ. b-leiben] > 'live'. Somewhat paradoxically, Eng. leave
is a family member as well, being derived from the causative *laibjan-
< *loip-(e)je- 'cause to remain, leave behind'. I'm digressing, but
my purpose is to show the possible extent of semantic drift for such
a root.
>
> _Very_ hypothetically (using possible but purely conjectural forms
is hardly a sound method), one could imagine *ripa- (Skt. lipa-
'smearing', Greek lipos 'fat, tallow') with the derived
meaning 'soil' (via 'dirt, clay, sticky substance'. On the other
hand, Herodotus writes the name Lipoxais with <ei>, which suggests
[i:] in the Scythian prototype and I have no idea how to justify a
long vowel here.
>
> Piotr
>
>
>
Leipoxais, Arpoxais, Kolaxais.
Suppose we accept our etymology for <leip-> and also that
<arpo-> reflects *arba- < I-Ir. *arbHa- < *orbHo- 'orphan; slave,
labourer'.
This made me think of something which might be entirely spurious, but
interesting (I thought) anyway:
In Danish, the sons of a king are titled by number thus:
1 2 3->
kronprins arveprins (prins)
The system is probably a calque from German. What I've always found
puzzling is that prince who is designated as an heir (O. Da <arve>)
by this system is actually the second in line. As I recall, <leip->
occurs in Germanic place names also (Ge. -leben, Da. -lev, Sw. -löv)
where it is usually taken to mean something in the direction
of "inheritance" too. So: the prince who is supposed to get the
kingdom, the prince who is next in line to get the kingdom, and the
charmed prince, who deserves the kingdom? Loose thought.
Torsten