Re: Brugmann's Law

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...>
wrote:

>
> On 2008-01-17 22:11, ualarauans wrote:
>
> > Could you please recommend some reliable and easy-to-get source

for

> > the origin and etymology of these words?
>
> I wonder if there is one. Etymological dictionaries may be

helpful, but

> I don't think it has occured to anyone to write a monograph about
> obscene words in Slavic (which is a pity). And as for

dictionaries... I

> have just discovered, to my severe disappointed, that Vasmer's

Russian

> etymological dictionary, otherwise so complete, has none of the

three

> worst ones (by which I mean two nouns and one verb). How

Victorian! Just

> like the New English Dictionary omitting the two most tabooed

English

> tetragrammata. Derksen has an entry for the verb *(j)ebati,

presumably

> because its Sanskrit and Greek cognates make it too time-honoured

to be

> ignored, but I can't see the nouns there. Aren't the Baltic and

Albanian

> connections of *pizda 'cunt' respectable enough? Even good old

Pokorny

> has an entry for it!
>
> Those words present interesting comparative problems and certainly
> deserve to be discussed; in particular the exact relation of Gk.

oípHo:

> (and zépHuros) to *jebati and Skt. yábHati _has_ been much

discussed

> (however, without reaching firm conclusions). There is a brief
> discussion of these issues in Beekes's Greek dictionary in the

relevant

> entries.

Thanks for the clues. BTW I heard a weird idea that these words
originally were a part of a sacral vocabulary utilized in fertility
cults and that their semantic degradation started with Christianity.
Etymological parallels in other IE languages if found could shed
some light upon this.

Makovsky in his Sravnitel'nyj slovar' mifologic^eskoj simvoliki v
indoevropejskix jazykax (1996) reconstructs for the "basic formula"
_j**b tvoju mat'_ the original meaning "be thou cursed with [my]
word/hand" (pp. 188-201, s.v. kliatva). I'm not sure if that makes
sense. Opinions?