W. Meyer-Lübke appears to have lumped four phonetically and lexically
distinct items into his Romance lemma #878, <baf(f)a>, which he
regards as a Schallwort. I propose the following tentative
subdivision:
1. *bafa 'piffle, humbug' vel sim., whence Provençal
<bafa> 'scoffing, mocking, derision', Abruzzese <abbafá> 'to deride,
ridicule', etc.; also probably French <bafouer> 'to scoff at'. This
may well be a genuine Schallwort.
2. *banfus, *ba:fus 'dank, sultry, oppressive', whence Lucchese
<banfa> 'oppression, anguish, anxiety', Milanese <banfá> 'to pant,
gasp', etc. (listed by M.-L. under his #932, <banf>, another
Schallwort); Romagnole <bafa> 'sultriness', Portuguese <bafo> 'steam,
breath', Neapolitan <abbafá> 'to breathe with difficulty', etc. This
can be understood as a Latin borrowing from P-Italic *banfo-,
regularly from PIE *gwn.dho-, with the normal grade *gwendh- seen in
Greek <bénthos> 'sea-bottom; great depth'. These neuters in -es-/-os
typically indicate the concrete result of an action, so the original
meaning of *gwendh- was perhaps 'to flood, overwhelm with water',
with semantic devaluation of *gwn.dho- from 'flooded, overwhelmed'
to 'soaked, moistened, damp' in Italic. (A similar devaluation
appears in Avestan <napta> 'damp, humid, moist'; the original strong
sense of *nep- is found in Umbrian <nepitu> 'overwhelm with water!'
vel sim. and *Neptu:nos, originally the Italic god of flooding rivers
(Latin <Neptu:nus>, Umbrian *Nehtuns borrowed into Etruscan as
<Nethuns>), from the /u/-stem *neptus 'flood'.) With *banfus,
preservation of -nf- only in NW Italian dialects probably reflects a
local feature of spoken Late Latin.
3. <bafer> 'grossus, ferinus, agrestis' (glosses), whence French
<bâfre> 'greedy eating', Piemontese <bafra> 'full belly', etc. This
is likely another P-Italic loanword to Latin. The PIE root is
possibly *gweH2dh-, *gwa:dh- 'to sink, submerge', whence Greek
<bathús> 'deep, thick, abundant', Sanskrit <ga:dháh.> 'deep, stout,
strong', <ga:háh.> 'depth, interior', <gáhana->, <gáhvara-> 'deep,
thick'; 'depth, chasm, thicket'. Of the senses glossed for
<bafer>, 'grossus' is easily enough 'thick', while 'ferinus'
and 'agrestis' perhaps represent 'pertaining to the deep woods',
hence 'savage, wild'. Lithuanian <gùdras> 'sly, clever, cunning', if
derived from *gwadh-rós, could be a direct cognate of <bafer>, in
which case the Baltic sense presumably arose metaphorically, 'deep in
craftiness, resourcefully deep', or the like. Etymologizing <bafer>
is so difficult that Ernout-Meillet in the DELL do not even attempt
it; "dialectal et d'origine obscure" is all they have to say.
4. *baffus 'large, round, thick', whence Old Lombardic <baffo>,
<baffa> 'side of bacon', Sicilian <baffa> 'pumpkin; clump of grass;
type of flask', etc.; probably Middle French <baffe> 'fish-trap'
(from its shape) and French <baffouer> 'to lace up, cord up' (from
the act of lacing up a fish-trap). This could have been extracted
from a hypocoristic noun *baffa 'large round object, large gourd' vel
sim. formed regularly from some derivative of <bafer> above. In fact
M.-L. has Sicilian/Calabrian <buffa> 'toad' listed under his #1373
(1), <buff>, yet another Schallwort, when it probably belongs under
#1374, <bu:fo:>, as the hypocoristic of a diminutive or other
derivative, 'dear little toad' or the like.
Douglas G. Kilday