Re: [tied] The recent terror attacks prompting a question

Carl Hult wrote:

> Today´s grisly terror attack in London had me thinking of the word
> terror and its relatives in other tungues. When something like this
> happens I tend to seek comfort in linguistics. What I am thinking of is
> whether the swedish verb ´darra´ (shake) (old swedish the same) can
> correlate and correspond to lat. tremor. The online etymology database
> has the PIE base *tre- for tremor and tremble, ´shake´, and my question
> is; can -t- change into -d- like this or is it grammatically
> impossible? Can *tre- become swedish ´darra´?

First, my condolences and feeling of solidarity for all those who have
been touched in any way by the bombings and their consequences.

The roots *tres- (with the rarer and probably secondary variant *ters-)
and *trem- have the same meaning of 'shake, tremble'; both occur in
Latin. They are generally believed to be extensions of something older
and more elementary like **ter- (unattested on its own) plus old
derivational suffixes. I don't know the etymology of <darra>, but it
can't be related to either, given the normal patterns of correspondence.

Piotr