Sincerely yours

After reading Dan Waniek's "Sine-cera-ly" signoff of
posting 28770, I did some poking around and found he had written
the following postscript to a letter on the Iridology Research site:
"*NOTE: The origin of the word "sincere" was exceptional.
SINE was of course Latin for "without" and CERA, stood only
for "wax"; SINE-CERA, sinceritas...The Roman matronnae used wax on
their cheeks, to hide their blushing. Not only today there is no
such thing any more, but we are encouraged by the industry to buy
and use that "blusher" stuff. "

However, I found in Lewis and Short's Latin Dictionary:
"sincerus , a, um, adj. [sin- = sim-, v. simplex; root in Sanscr.
sama, whole, together; and root skir-, Sanscr. kir-, pour out] ,
clean, pure, sound, not spoiled, uninjured, whole, entire, real,
natural, genuine, sincere "
and a different root for the second element from Watkins in the AHD
under *ker- "grow":
"Compound *sm-ke:ro- "of one growth".

I couldn't check the Leiden Pokorny, which seems to be
unreachable more often than not the last few weeks.

I've read the "without wax" etymology before, and don't
know if it's ancient or modern (although it does sound like
something that Varro, or maybe Isidore, would come up with).
Sorry to spoil an amusing story, but it's not accepted by serious
etymologists.

Poured out whole and of one growth (no wax either),
Dan Milton