Re: [tied] Tychicus

----- Original Message -----
From: "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...>
To: "andelkod" <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, April 12, 2003 2:01 AM
Subject: Re: [tied] Tychicus


>> Also, slavic word for silent is 'tih'. Does any cognate of 'tih' in meaning 'silent' exist in any other IE language?

> I believe that the primary sense of the Slavic words is 'calm' rather than 'silent'. According to Buck they're related to Lith tiesus 'straight' and some other Baltic cognates of similar meaning, not to Lat tace:re and ON þegja' to be silent'.

Synchronically, the two clusters of meanings ('noiseless, low, silent' and 'calm, tranquil, meek') seem to be equally "basic" everywhere in Slavic. The primitive meaning was probably something like 'quiet, motionless'. The most important Slavic words in this etymon, beside *tixU < *teis-o-, are verbs meaning 'calm down, grow silent, abate', such as *tixati < *teis- and *tixno~ti, and the causative *te^s^iti < *tois-eje- 'comfort' (with derived meanings like 'make happy'); hence the elements *te^s^i- and *-te^xU in Slavic names (such as Pol. Cieszymir and Wojciech).

I think the Balto-Slavic root may be related to Old Indic <stiya:> 'still water' and <stimita-> 'fixed, motionless', and more generally to *tei- ~ *stei- 'press, tighten' (> 'immobilise'). If so, Slavic *tiskati 'press' < *tei-sk-, *te^snU 'tight' < *toi-sk-o-, etc., might be distantly related as well.

I fully agree that the name of St. Tychicus, a 1st-c. native Ephesian, is absolutely unlikely to have anything to do with Slavic *tixU and very likely to have everything to do with Greek <tukHe:> 'fortune, chance, luck'. <tukHikos> is attested as a Greek adjective, and <tukHo:n> was a by-name of Hermes.

Piotr