On 2008-01-18 02:53, Rick McCallister wrote:
> kura (sp?) is obviously related to English whore, ho
> and German hure
This is unlikely, despite the similarity. The (pan-)Slavic word is
<kurva>, apparently continuing an older *u: stem (*kury/*kurUve). The
Germanic one, *xo:ro:(n-) seems to go back to *kah2-ro- (cf. ca:rus,
Skt. ka:ma-). There's no way of deriving Slavic *kury from this root
(Slavic *u normally comes from older *ou/*au). If it were not for the
initial, I'd suspect a borrowing from Germanic (as others have done),
but that would surely have given Slavic *xury.
Vasmer suggests *kury was an old feminine derivative of *kurU 'cock,
rooster' originally meaning 'hen' (now generally replaced by <kura,
kurica>). He gives the pair *svek(U)rU : *svekry as the model (it's
hardly a productive pattern, but *-u: stems are common among bird's
names). I am not sure what to make of the word. Every time I think about
its etymology, I feel like saying it (as an expletive, it is used in
Polish to express chagrin or frustration, rather like Eng. f***!).
Piotr