From: Arnaud Fournet
Message: 61518
Date: 2008-11-10
----- Original Message -----
From: "tsporta" <ton.sales@...>
>
> > Would this be the same word as Spanish bata "robe,
> > nightgown" via Arabic? Is it originally from Persian?
>
> No idea.
>
> Brian
>
Joan Coromines in his Spanish etymological dictionary says that 'bata'
is first attested in Spanish in 1717, where is derived from 'buata'
and related to 'guata', French 'ouate', It. 'ovatta', German 'watte'
and English 'wad', all meaning 'cotton for lining clothes'. He adds
that the word is first attested in English ('wad', 1540) where it is
of uncertain origin, plausibly from Arabic 'wad.d.a¿', 'to put',
seemingly short for 'wad.d.a¿ bat.a:na', 'to put linings' in the sense
of 'replenish'(as done for gloves) or else for 'wad.d.a¿ tauban', to
line a cloth. He does not mention a specific (Egyptian?) origin but he
does suspect the English word originates in Medieval international
trading and that French 'ouate' may have been the intermediary between
the Mediterranean Lingua Franca and English --or Germanic, possibly
Hanseatic-- traders.
Ton Sales
=======
As I mentioned in a previous mail,
the dialectal word wad.d.a cannot be the etymon of ouate
as we should expect **wald-(a) if early or **wad(a) if later,
in any case d. could never become -t- in French and get back to -d- in
English
this does not make any sense.
It's not even possible that wad and ouate can be connected.
A.
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