Re: [tied] Re: log - how it developed?

Daniel J. Milton wrote:

> I really don't see your problem. I must have heard hundreds of
> times the colloquial English for someone who uttered firm strictures
> regarding the behavior of others, "He laid down the law", and never
> before questioned its appropriateness. Of course, the alliteration
> that spices the phrase wouldn't have been there when the ancestral
> word for "law" took on its meaning.

One could add that quite a few legal terms are derived from the PIE root
*dHeh1- 'place, put' (+ a hundred secondary meanings). Suffice it to
mention OE do:m 'judgement' < *dHoh1-mo-, and the corresponding
denominative verb de:man 'to judge'.

Piotr