Re: Portuguese sapo "toad", akin to Slavic z^aba ?

--- In cybalist@... s.com, Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@ ...> wrote:
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Joao S. Lopes <josimo70@.. .>
>
>
> > The Portuguese word for toad is "sapo" whose origin is unknown,
> > usually seen as Pre-Roman. There was attempts to relate it to
> > Greek se:ps, to Basque and another possibilities.
>
> > I think sapo is very similar to Slavic z^aba. The word could be
> > IE, but from where? Ligurian? Lusitanian?
>
> > PIE *gWe:bH- - Germanic quabbe Dutch kwabbe Latin bu:fo:n-
> > (<*gWo:bH?) Salvic z^aba Albanian zhabë (< *Slavic?)
>
>
> It is related to Basque apo, aho (if I remember correctly). I asked
> Larry Trask and he said it was a toss up whether or not it was
> original to Basque or whether Ibero-Romance and Basque both got it
> from a third language. There should be something in the old IE or
> Nostratic archives on it, or in his History of Basque
>
Teask, The History of Basque, pp. 419-420
(in a long discussion of what Basque words might possibly have been
loaned into the Romance and other languages)
'Cast sapo 'toad' : Bq apo
Castilian shares this word only with Portuguese. The Basque word
appears variously as zapo, apo or sapo, of which zapo seems to be the
earliest form. Basque sapo is recent, and almost certainly due to
Castilian influence. The form apo may also result from a mishearing of
Castilian los sapos as los apos. It has frequently been thought that
Castilian sapo is a loan from Basque zapo. This is not impossible, but
a complication is the well-attested use of zapo in Basque as a generic
term for 'creepy-crawly' , with various other specializations besides
'toad', such as 'firefly'. Corominas and Pascual show little interest
in a Basque origin for the Castilian word, and provide instead an
extraordinarily wide-ranging discussion of possibly related European
words ranging as far as ancient Greek sips 'poisonous snake, lizard'.'

You might possibly like this quote better:
Orël & Stol'bova, Hamito-Semitic Etymological Dictionary

'581 *c^.amb- "lizard, frog"
Semitic *s^.abb-:
Hebrew s.a:b "turtle",
Arab d.abb-, Harsusi d.o:b, Mehri d.o:b, Shheri d.ob "lizard".
*-b(b)- continues a prenasalized HS cluster *-mb-.
WCh *c^.umb- "frog": Hausa c.umbo:.
Secondary *-u- before a labial.
Rift *c^amb- "frog": Alagwa c^embe´u, Burunge c^ambe´u.'

Now why didn't Trask look at that?

Torsten

Does Hubschmidt have anything on sapo? He seemed to have combed through Berber pretty well.