g wrote:
>
> Methinks Alex is intrigued by this: on the one hand, there is
> the "veteran" who quits his army job and gets, as a retiree
> (i.e. as a veteran), inter alia, the right to settle down as a
> colonist. OTOH, there is the idiomatic wording in Romanian
> (and in Albanian, as Mr Konushevci put it today): an ex-soldier
> is allowed to go back to the "vatr&", i.e. hearth = figurative
> for home (cf. Rum. "a fi lãsat la vatrã").
>
> But, AFAIK, I've never heard/read that Rum. vatr& (deemed
> as a Balkanic substrate word) is related to "b&trân" < veteranus.
>
>> Piotr
>
> George
>
That is exactly how I seen the things George. And the senses are so
strictly related to ex-soldiers that it cannot be a coincidence. Less
the meaning of "bãtrân" which is not related to soldier but just "old"
for animate.
And it ought to remember there are two words more from Latin which means
old:
veclus > vechi= old for inanimate
vetulus > vãtui = old for animate.
I perfectly agree that veterans have been old (40-50) years and from
this aspect there is easy to think veteran=old, but there is something
very interesting. There is the word "bãtrânior" which is given by DEX as
derived from... "bãtrâior".
We agree that "bãtrânior" sounds a bit "unangenehm" in Rom and
"bãtrâior" is the one who sounds "OK".
A such confirmation ( as the derivation of bãtrânior from bãtrâior) will
confirme more that _not_ "veteranus" is the root for the Rom. family ,
but a root like "vatar/vater" which looks very appropiate to Latin
"veter-". Here, as in "vita/viata", "vitelus/viTel" is allways a small
difference, but enough for not allowing these words to derive from
Latin.
alex