Re: Lat. gladius and Sorothaptic

Coromines puts gladi, gladiada, gladiador, gladiatori, gladiol, gladiola, glai and glaia in their right alphabetical place, in a single line in vol. 4, page 521, where the reader is redirected to the esglaiar entry, which can be found in vol. 3 p. 583 and runs through more than three packed pages. He derives it from colloquial Classic Latin gladius, which he says is adopted from Celtic, during the Gallic invasions of Italy, meaning a weapon for slaughtering humans and also the associated mortal terror the Catalan and Occitan verb still conserves. Towards the end of the article, on p. 586, he states that, assuming a "Sorotaptic" (ie. Urnenfelder) origin, the Celtic word may directly derive from *kláuiios (first u and second i semivocalic), a near relative of OldPruss kalabian 'sword', that Uhlenbeck relates to Skr karava:lah. Then he asserts that a convincing IE etymology for the Baltic kalavìjas may be the root found in Lith. kálti 'strike' (cf. Pok. IEW 546), a root from which the following also derive: Celt. kladios 'sword', Lat. clades 'slaughter' and, with a wo enlargement, Lith. kalvis 'smith' and Lat clava.

I hope this will help.

Ton Sales (Barcelona)