From: fournet.arnaud
Message: 57213
Date: 2008-04-13
----- Original Message -----
From: "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@...>
The cat itself might come from Africa, but looking for the word there
is a dead end. None of the three Coptic words for 'cat', including
the one used in the Coptic version of the Epistle of Jeremiah,
resembles <catta> at all. My best guess is that Latin <catta> in
both its senses, 'certain Pannonian bird (the wagtail?)'
and 'domestic cat', is borrowed from Messapic (or related Illyro-
Japygian) *katta, a hypocoristic form of a compound whose first
element *katt- is cognate with Lat. <quassus> 'shaken', and whose
second (unidentifiable) element means 'tail' or 'rear end', the
compound meaning 'having a shaken tail' or 'shaking its tail', much
like Greek <ailouros> 'waving-tailed'. It is near my bedtime, so
details of this hypothesis will follow later.
Douglas G. Kilday
===========
Mr. DGK,
-dead end- !?
Coptic is not all AA family.
Arabic has qat.u for cat.
From Arabic, we can infer there existed some PAA word like *qat.u,
Arnaud