Re: Strawberries [was: [tied] IE *p and *b]

Isn't the "straw" of "strawberry" related to the verb "strew", i.e. the berries that are "strewn" around on the ground (as strawberries are found in the wild)?

Andrew

Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@...> wrote:

Well put.
I'd try to see if one could posit straw(berry) as a
folk-etymology based on Gmc *srah-. German,
unfortunately, has Erdbeere, right? Are there any
dialect forms or other Germanic forms cognate with
strawberry?
And I'd also posit that *star-berry, a chestnut
popular with HS teachers (red flesh with yellow seed
stars, get it?), is also a folk etymology.

--- Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@... edu.pl> wrote:

> On 2007-12-10 00:22, Rick McCallister wrote:
>
> > I was thinking of straw-berry as related to German
> > Stroh "straw" --but the Latin form, unfortunately
> has
> > /g/ not /k/. But I imagine the English form is a
> folk
> > etymology.
>
> Ger. Stroh has no etymological velar at the end. The
> <h> is just a
> length-marker. The OHG word was <stro:> = OE
> stre:aw. Even if you assume
> that <strawberry> has nothing to do with 'straw' and
> derives from
> something with initial *sr-, not *str-, Germanic
> *-aw- doesn't match
> Lat. -ag-.
>
> Piotr
>
>

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