From: dgkilday57
Message: 59158
Date: 2008-06-09
>M.-L. implicitly gets <bouffe> from a different Schallwort, his #13737
> --- dgkilday57 <dgkilday57@...> wrote:
> >
> > 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.
>
> Related to bouffe?
> > 2. *banfus, *ba:fus 'dank, sultry, oppressive',Sp. <vaho> is dead on, and I just whacked myself in the head. M.-L.
> > 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.
>
> This seems like it is somehow related to Spanish vapor
> "steam", vaho "steam, frosty breath when it's cold",
> bofe "(animal) lung", bofear "pant, wheeze"
> > 3. <bafer> 'grossus, ferinus, agrestis' (glosses),M.-L. mentions an Italian <baffi> 'mustache' under his #878(1)
> > 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.
> >
> There is a Southern Italian word bafa, baffa
> "mustache" --I've heard it from Italian Americans so I
> don't know which or if it's Sicilian or Neapolitan.
> Some claim that Va fangù, generally seen as va fa(re)
> in culo "go take it up the ass" is really "baffa in
> cu(lo) "(your) mustache on (my) ass".
>