16-10-03 14:47, Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen wrote:
> But if there is a Romanian word hoaspã 'husk, pod', I find it pretty
> obvious that it is from Latin hospes, -item 'host'. The semantic
> development would be much as in German Patrone 'cartridge',
> ultimately some form of Latin patro:nus. The h- would be a learned
> restoration.
I'd like to propose what I believe to be a plausible alternative: Slavic
<ospa> (< *o(b)-sUpa, related to *suti, *sUpo~ 'strew, scatter, pour'),
attested at least in Polish with the meaning 'husks, bran' (I'm not sure
about South Slavic). The same word is better known from several Slavic
languages with the secondary figurative meaning of 'smallpox, cowpox'
(or any other disease characterised by skin eruptions). It would account
for <-oaspã> in a completely straightforward manner, and would require
no semantic change. Like the Latinate etymology, it fails to explain the
initial <h->, which might be due to some kind of formal contamination,
though I can't think of a plausible source at the moment.
Piotr