From: Rick McCallister
Message: 50327
Date: 2007-10-17
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister__________________________________________________
> <gabaroo6958@...> wrote:
> >
> > Any chance that word is related to cott, cottage?
> > or to Spanish coto "enclosure"?
> >
>
> As to English cot (and cottage), the consensus seems
> to be about a
> Germanic origin (cf. Dutch and Icelandic kot, hut).
> It may be somehow
> related to the (also presumably Germanic) Old
> English cot (and German
> kotte/kutte ), both meaning 'coarse mantle'
> ---whence English coat,
> Low Latin cot(t)a, French cotte, Spanish cota (and
> Catalan 'cotilla',
> a woman's corset).
>
> As to the Spanish coto/cota, there are at least four
> different roots
> involved here:
>
> a) the cot- of cottage (=hut), also seen in French
> coterie and Spanish
> cotilla (a gossiping woman) and cotilleo (gossip)
>
> b) the cot- of coat, seen in Spanish cota (a word of
> Middle Age
> echoes, now generally contextualized by adding 'de
> malla')
>
> c) Latin quota, as seen in cota, meaning "altitude"
> or "price level"
> (in standard topography and stock exchange contexts,
> respectively)
>
> d) Latin cautum, which originally meant 'a caution,
> guarantee' (from
> cave:re, protect, preeempt) and later 'reserved
> area' (= Spanish coto).
>
> So, Spanish 'coto' is not originally a term denoting
> 'enclosure' but a
> Roman legal term eventually designing an object (the
> 'guaranteed
> property' in this case), in a way that parallels
> Latin quinta (= a
> fifth part) and Romance finca (= what remains [after
> dividing a
> legacy]), both of which now mean a (generally rural)
> private property
> ("quinta", "finca") in Spanish, like "coto" (though
> the latter is
> generally assumed not to contain a house, as the
> other two are, but
> rather to have hunting or livestock applications).
>
>