Re: Puhvel's derivation & comparison

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 61979
Date: 2008-12-08

On 2008-12-08 18:15, The Egyptian Chronicles wrote:

> Sorry Torsten, I missed to say: with the Greek harpagmos, a
> word derived from harpazo, "to ravish away," "carry off," "plunder".

I don't think there's any single generally accepted etymology of
<harpázo:> 'snatch' (plus <harpagé:> 'robbery', <harpáge:> 'hook' and
several other related words). It may be related to <hárpe:> 'sickle'
(Slavic *sIrpU, Latv. sirpis 'sickle', Lat. sarpo: 'cut off, prune', pp.
sarptum, OHD sarf 'sharp, rough'). The root of the 'sickle' word is
usually reconstructed as *serp-, though I wonder if *sh2arp- wouldn't
fit the evidence better; then there's also *(s)kerp- 'cut off' (not to
mention *(s)ker- *(s)kert-, *(s)kers- and *sers-, all semantically close
to each other).

Piotr