>That would make it similar to Late Latin excremo: 'burn out'. But isn't
>it rather <sh-> + *krus-mo- (cf. Gk. kru:mos, kruos 'frost', Lat. crusta
>'crust') from *kreus- 'form a crust' (hence 'cold ashes')? Anyway, we
>seem to have one (1) arguably substratal item in the 100-word Swadesh
>list for Romanian.
BTW, Rum. <a (se) screme>, <scremere> ['---], <scremut> [-'-],
<scremet> ['--], <scream&t> ['--], with the initial meaning pertaining
to defecation (esp. when suffering from obstipatio), and the 2nd,
meaning "trying hard to do something, taking pains" & the like (esp.
whenever performing some physical heaving, such as lifting a heavy
burden, e.g. barbells in olympic or power lifting). (In modern
Romanian, there's no semantic link that I'd be aware of between
<scrum> and <screm/e>; there's only the phonetic appearance, where
only the vowels differ.)
>Piotr
George
PS: For those a bit older among the cybalists, this mnemo-reminded
me a funny tune broadcast by radio rock-pop-blues programs back in the
'70s, "Constipation Blues"; starring a guy called Screamin' Jay Hawkins :-)
[I mention this only for the sake of the coincidence Rum. <screm--> and
Engl. <scream>. After all, the Rumanian act of <scremere> involves
some kind of <screamin'> as well. :]]
http://www.lastcallrecords.com/biographies/screamingjay.html
http://home.datacomm.ch/mik/ba/h/hawkins_jay/texts/constipationblues.html