From: Torsten
Message: 68517
Date: 2012-02-09
>That certainly seems preferable to equating "whore" with "adult woman", whatever one thinks of the semantics of my proposal. But my proposal, which replaces it, has the merit of including the alternation -u-/-o- which is also reflected in GoÅÄ b's proposal *XÑrv-at-//*Xorv-at- "Croat", the "whore" and "cow" words could be surviving pre-Grimm variants *kÑrw- // *korw-.
> Jens has published an ingenious explanation of Balto-Slavic *kárwa:
> as a loan from proto-Celtic: *k^erh2wah2 > *karawa: (Joseph's Law)
> --> BSl. *kar&wa:. It has the merit of explaining two different
> oddities (the o-grade that doesn't cause the Saussure effect and the
> "centum" stop) with one fell swoop. Many of the etymologies regarded
> as plausible by Gol/a,b would be regarded as outdated or otherwise
> questionable now, and the one for the 'whore' word is a good
> example. The vocalism doesn't seem to make any sense, and the
> semantic development is anything but compelling. Vasmer may be right
> in equating 'whore' and 'hen' in Slavic.