Re: Portuguese buraco "hole"

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Joao S. Lopes" <josimo70@...> wrote:

>
> In Portuguese, buraco means "hole". Antenor Nascentes's Etymological Dictionary states some possibilities about its origin: from *furaco (cf. Portuguese furo, furar "pierce, to pierce"), and a connexion to Germanic bore. Any comment? Gothic? Celtic?
>

In Galician, the form burato is also used besides buraco, an alternation like pataca ~ patata.

It can't derive from Latin foro: 'to pierce, to bore', whose participle fora:tum regularly gives furato. Neither it can't be from Celtic because there's no cognate verb there. And of course Gothic can be also ruled out. It must be an extinct pre-Celtic IE language.