Re: Scientist's etymology vs. scientific etymology

--- dgkilday57 <dgkilday57@...> wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister
> <gabaroo6958@...>
> wrote:
> >
> > --- dgkilday57 <dgkilday57@...> wrote:
> >
> > ...
> > >
> > > Oscan <trutum> 'quartum', for *ptrutum, shows
> that
> > > the zero-grade
> > > stem did indeed exist. The form <Ptroni(us)>
> from
> > > the Ager Paelignus
> > > shows that Paelignian also had *ptru-, without
> > > dropping the p-;
> > > likewise there is an Etruscan <Ptruni>, the
> > > gentilicium borrowed from
> > > one of these conservative P-Italic languages.
> > >
> > So, Petronius Arbiter, the inventor of the road
> trip,
> > was really a Quatronius in Latin?
> >
> I don't know whether Petronius and Pomponius have
> exact Latin
> equivalents. Their bases may have meant 'leader of
> a group of
> four/five' or the like. In Umbrian we have <puntes>
> 'groups of
> five', and there is good reason to suppose that
> <pontifex> was
> borrowed from a Sabine compound, literally 'one who
> makes a group of
> five', that is, 'one who completes a group of five
> with his
> presence', 'member of a group of five' (as the
> College of Pontifices
> originally was).
>

It would indeed be interesting to see the Pontiff as
the "giver of high fives" rather than a stodgy "bridge
maker"