PIE terms for sexual organs [was: Re: -st]

From: Sergejus Tarasovas
Message: 34926
Date: 2004-10-31

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Abdullah Konushevci"
<a_konushevci@...> wrote:
>
> As far as we know there is verbal root *pezd- 'to fart', synonimic
> with *perd- 'id.'. Suffixed form *pezd-i yields Alb. pith ~ pidhi,
> due to -eCC- > -iCC- (cf. *bhendh- > Alb. bind, ghend- > gjind-,
> *g^hrezd/*g^herzd- > drithë etc.). It yields Eng. <feist> and
> <fisten> 'to fart', Lat. pedere.

On the one hand, there's no simple way to derive Balto-Slavic
*pi:zda: from *pesd- 'fart (quietly)'. On the other hand, the Balto-
Slavic words usually considered reflexes of *pesd- cannot be
straightforwardly derived from it as well: Slavic *pIzde^ti seems to
have an unetymological *I (to break the unpronounceable cluster *pzd-
), and *b of Baltic *bezd- (~*bzd-) would point to a secondary origin
of its *e (voicing *p->[b], then [e]-epenthesis). In view of all
that, it's not impossible to derive Slavic *pizda from a vrddhied
*pIzd-, and the Baltic secondary ablaut e~i(:), being normal next to
sonorants, as also in principle possible next to [z] (as a surrogate
sonorant). Probably, we are dealing with a contamination (due to
relatively small semantic distance between 'anus' (~'hole')
and 'fart') of the reflexes of *(h1)pisd-(o/eh2)- and *pesd- in Balto-
Slavic (and Albanian?) here.

Sergei