--- In cybalist@..., "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
> Thank you Pavel!
> This is the "cover" root:
>
> http://bartleby.com/61/roots/IE214.html
Do you mean that both a helmet and a skin may cover or protect
something so *xelma- and <zalmo-> must be related? The notion
of 'covering, concealing, protecting' is extremely general -- lots of
things are 'covers' or 'shelters' in a sense, e.g. house, sky,
clothes, shield, lid, eyelid, roof, etc. Note that you are comparing
two _derived_ meanings, leaving out the prototypical one. Without a
more detailed justification the equation is too rough to exclude
chance agreement. The vaguer semantics, the more accidental matches.
For example, Sanskrit has <s'arman-> 'shelter, protection' (probably
< *k^el-men-, i.e. related to Gmc. *xel- 'protect', Lat.
celo 'conceal' etc.; cf. also Skt. s'aran.a- 'protective') and
_unrelated_ but coincidentally similar <carman-> 'skin' (< *ker-men-,
cf. OPrus. kermen- 'flesh').
In another posting you adduce <holm> 'islet' as "most likely" the o-
grade of *xelm- "inspired by the shape". This is another accidental
lookalike, and not even an o-grade (IE o-grades have Gmc. a!). <holm>
derives from *xulma- < *kl-mo- (related to Eng. hill, Lat. culmen,
celsus, Lith. kálnas, etc.). Reflexes in Satem languages show no *k^,
and the root *kel- means 'rise, project' (see the next entry in the
ditionary of IE roots).
Piotr