Re: Bow and arrow

> > Latin captus gives Gaulish caxtos (assuming with Delamarre
> > that the word is not native, but taken from Latin, although
> > nothing changes if caxtos < PIE *kaptos). The change pt >
> > cht seems to be pan-Celtic, and no intermediate stage is
> > attested, as far as I know. It may have been pt > ft > xt,
> > or pt > kt > xt. I slightly prefer the first alternative.
>
> Odd that the Dutch should repeat the change of the Gauls. Btw,

given

> the /a/ of 'captus', the Latin word itself might be loaned. It also
> has a cognate in Germanic with /a/: *haft- which would earn it a
> place in Kuhn's list of Latin - Germanic cognates with /a/.

One might line it up with Dutch 'kappen' "cut" if that is a
Nordwestblock word. As to the semantics, one should start with
something like "grabbing something upright with the left hand and
cutting of the top with the right hand" (as in harvesting with a
sickle?). 'kappe' exists in Danish as a loan mostly restricted to
maritime matters: 'kappe et reb' "cut (loose) a rope", 'kappe
masterne' "cut down(/loose) the masts". Note that to cut down masts,
you cut them loose, which I suspect is the reason the semantics gets
so 'bushy'. Kuhn has a long list of *kap-/*kup- cognates (German
Kuppe in place names = "hill"). Cf. Latin 'caput', in compunds
-cep(-s).


Torsten