Re: [tied] The word for horse

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> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "alex_lycos" <altamix@...>
> To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Sunday, February 09, 2003 8:29 PM
> Subject: Re: [tied] The word for horse
>
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>
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>>Of course you will say I have nothing in the hand to say that the word
>>
> "cal" was known before "cabalus".
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>>Remember please about "celer", Greek "keles" and Greek "keler" as well
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> as about Old Latin "celeres"= equestrian corpus. In the Eolian language "keler" meant "horseman".
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> <celere:s> means 'the swift' (from <celer> 'swift', not any 'horse' word). How on earth could any of these words have developed int Rom. cal??
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> Any word with a single *-l- would have been affected by rhotacism. On the other hand, the development of caballu- > Rom. cal is completely regular (loss of intervocalic /b/ as e.g. in <scrie>, no rhotacism because the lateral was geminated). Albanian kalë is normal too -- Albanian lost all intervocalic voiced stops early enough for the oldest loans from Latin to have been affected.
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> Piotr
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Are you sure that 'celer' isn't a horse word?
Equuleus is a constellation identified with Celeris. "Some mythologists
said that the constellation represented Celeris, the brother of Pegasus,
given by Mercury to Castor; or Cyllarus, given to Pollux by Juno" [from
'Starnames', Their Lore and Meaning, Richard Hinchley Allen, 1889]
'Accelerate', to speed up, as in to win a race, is likely to be a horse
action.
If you were to accept that 'celer' is a horse word, would you accept
that it is related to 'cabalus'?

Anne Wright