Re: Mille (thousand)

Francesco, your nice selection of easy-to-use links is much appreciated.


Patrick

----- Original Message -----
From: "Francesco Brighenti" <frabrig@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, March 08, 2008 12:58 PM
Subject: [tied] Re: Mille (thousand)






--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Daniel J. Milton" <dmilt1896@...>
wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Carl Hult <Carl.Hult@> wrote:
> >
> > What is the origin of latin mille, the roman word for thousand?
> > Does it have any relation to other words?
>
> Watkins in American Heritage Dictionary reports a possible PIE
> etymology, but seems to be skeptical himself:
> ENTRY: *gheslo-
> DEFINITION: Seen by some as a base for words meaning "thousand."
> Oldest form *heslo-, becoming *gheslo- in centum languages.
> Suffixed form *ghesl-yo-... Greek khilioi 'thousand'...
> Latin mille 'thousand', which has been analyzed as *sm- 'one'
> + a form *ghsli-, but is of obscure origin. (Pokorny héslo- 446.)


Others (including Pokorny) have also compared Proto-Indo-Iranian
*saj'hasra- (> Vedic sahasra-, Avestan hazan.ra- 'thousand'), which
would contain *sa- (< PIE *sm.- 'one') and *j'hasra- (PIE *gheslo-).

Yet this PIE etymology is extremely uncertain. Discussion by
different scholars is found in the following book, for which I
provide some tinyurls linking to the concerned pages:

http://tinyurl.com/2wl9ov

http://tinyurl.com/2a9kvf

http://tinyurl.com/227cma

http://tinyurl.com/25wcu6

More criticism in Frisk's Greek etymological dictionary at

http://tinyurl.com/2fsr4b
(in German)

Karl Menninger's 1934 book on number words has another such
discussion:

http://tinyurl.com/3yuh5v

He correctly asks himself: what is a *gheslo-?

Finally, as regards Latin mille specifically, Lewis & Short's Latin
dictionary gives for this word one of the abortive IE etymologies
attempted in the past ("Sanscr. root mil-, 'combine, associate
[meet, encounter, join]'; Gr. homilos ['multitude, assembled
crowd']; cf. [Lat.] miles ['soldier']"):

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/lexindex?lookup=mille&db=ls

Regards,
Francesco