Re: fungus = mushroom

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "ufnkex" <spamstorage@...> wrote:

>
> > Apart from the fore mentioned, the only genuine IE word for
> > 'mushroom' is *g´ombh-o- 'swelling', which has this meaning in
> > Slavic, but 'swelling' in Baltic and 'buttocks' in Germanic.
> > External cognates can be found in:
> >
> > Altaic *kHómp[e] 'fungus'
> > Uralic *kómpV 'mushroom'
>
> Hungarian gomba "mushroom"; gomb "button" (in clothes);
> gömb "orb, sphere, ball, globe"; gömbi "spherical"; gömbszerü
> "spheroid"; gömbhal "blowfish/fugu"; gömbölyü "round, rotund, spherical, tubby"; gömbfa "log"; etc.
>

The Hungarian forms can't be inherited from Uralic, although the word 'mushroom' could have been borrowed from Slavic. The words meaning 'round', etc. must have a different origin from a root *gomb- 'swelling' vel sim of expressive (i.e. phonsymbolic) origin similar to IE *bamb-.

From this, we've got Spanish bombo (slang) 'belly of a pregnant woman', bambolla 'pomp', Catalan bombolla, Basque punpuila 'bubble' < *bumbulia, with pretty identical Baltic parallels.