--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Joao S. Lopes" <josimo70@...> wrote:
>
> And the word for "fabric, cloth":
>
> Latin pannus "fabric", Greek pe:nos "cloth", OE fana "banner" < PIE *peH2n-?
>
I think this etymology is incorrect for the Latin word for two main reasons:
1) We should expect
*pa:nus instead of
pannus.
2) The Latin word also means 'rag'.
Assuming this was the original meaning, IMHO this would be a Paleo-Italic (Ligurian?) loanword
*panno- corresponding to Italic
*pend- > Latin
pendeo: 'to hang',
pondus 'weigh', Celtic
*Fondo- 'stone', with
-nd- >
-nn- and
-o- >
-a-. For the semantic connection, see Spanish
colgajo 'strip, shred' from
colgar 'to hang'.
However, derivation from IE
*(s)pend- 'to spin' (alternatively, De Vaan proposes also
*ped- 'to fall') seems dubious to me. Nikolayev prefers a link to Balto-Slavic
*(s)pend- 'to pull, to stretch': http://newstar.rinet.ru/cgi-bin/response.cgi?single=1&basename=/data/ie/piet&text_number=++2602&root=config
Interestingly, there's a Romance verb
*(a)panna:re with the
homonymous meanings 'to get, to steal' > Spanish
apañar (borrowed into Portuguese
apanhar), Gascon
panar and 'to attire; to season (food); to fix' > Spanish
apañar. The semantic shift 'to tear (into rags)' > 'to get, to steal' is parallel to the one of
*rauba:re 'to steal' (Portuguese
roubar, Spanish
robar), a loanword from Germanic
*raubo:n- 'to tear' related to
*raupa 'cloth' (Portuguese
roupa, Spanish
ropa, Catalan
roba, French
robe), from Germanic
*raupjan- 'to tear'.
NB: IMHO "Italo-Celtic" reflects an Italic substrate/adstrate in Celtic, and not a taxon node.