From: Rick McCallister
Message: 51384
Date: 2008-01-18
> I am inclined to regard the Slavic as deriving fromcybalist@yahoogroups.com<mailto:cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
> IE *kWeru-, which I think may be connected with the
> idea of 'widowhood', perhaps with more distant
> relationships to 'gleaning.
>
> This is a pejorative rather than an admirative term
> like *kaH-ro, 'very desired'.
>
> Patrick
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Piotr
> Gasiorowski<mailto:gpiotr@...>
> To:
>
>____________________________________________________________________________________
> Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2008 8:34 PM
> Subject: Re: [tied] Re: Brugmann's Law
>
>
> 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
>
>
>
>