Brian M. Scott wrote:
French <sève> appears to be the regular outcome of Latin <sapa>; OE <séaw>
appears not to be immediately related.
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Thank you for your comment. Apparently your views are shared by French
dictionaries like "Centre National de Ressources Textualles et
Lexicales. Unfortunately the OED does not share this opinion, further it
views this connection as improbable.
Below is the OED quote verbatim:
"the hypothesis that the W. Ger. word was adopted from Latin sapa is
improbable in view of its relation to the Scandinavian synonym; besides ,
the assumed development of meaning in popular Latin (of which the Rom. words
afford the only evidence) appears unlikely unless as a result of extraneous
influence)"
(The JPEG of the OED passage has been sent to you privately.)
The members can view the particular OED quote by clicking the following URL:
http://www.theegyptianchronicles.com/ANEW/SAB.html
Besides, I am curious to hear how you reconcile the disparity of the
meanings between sap as "the watery fluid that circulates through a plant"
and the Latin Sapa, "as new wine boiled down to a proportion of its
original volume"? Do you see any rational explanation that merits lumping
them together as one and the same? Personally, I think it is grasping for a
connection that does not exist.
Having said that, I am equally curious to know your opinion of the gist of
my post:
That the term "sap" (PIE from base *sab) is not exclusively an IE word,
since it is equally found in Classical Arabic as "sab".
Any thoughts?
Ishinan