Re: Let's forget *pu:tium

I hate to wave wet blankets at bulls, but I have a word of caution:

><praepu:tium>
>contained a bound morpheme which, however, made perfect sense. If the
>foreskin constitutes the front (prae-) of the -pu:tium, What can this
>-pu:tium be? Let me think...

umm... fore-skiin = prae -??? Skin???
There is no reason to assume that the -putium means penis.

><prae-pu:tium> PRESUPPOSES some (presumably slangy) Latin word of the
>form <pu:t-X> and with the likely meaning 'penis'. ...
>the existence of the word is GUARANTEED by the existence of
><praepu:tium>.

Far from it. We all know of cases where a word is re-analysed by speakers.
Imagine an original *praepu-ti- (or whatever) which gets re-analysed as
prae-putium. Or an original pre:pu- mistaken as a rustic version for a
supposed "real" praepu- and so on. Praeputium does not guarantee the
existence of -putium at all, any more than cranberry presupposes *cran in
English.

Peter