From: Bhrihskwobhloukstroy
Message: 70204
Date: 2012-10-16
> A Celtic /bid/ is nevertheless attested, although not with the
> meaning 'small': Scottish Gaelic bìd 'very small portion, nip, chirp'
> and/or bid, Irish bíd (not in DIA) 'fence' (Alexander MacBain, An
> Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language, Edinburgh 1911: 36;
> Malcolm Maclennan, A Pronouncing and Etymological Dictionary of the
> Gaelic Language - Gaelic-English English-Gaelic, Edinburgh 1925: 37);
> apart from the irregular comparison with Welsh bid '(lopped) hedge,
> quickset hedge, bush', a stem /biddo-/ seems to occur in Biddu[ CIL
> XIII 7512 (Bingen, cf. Alfred Holder, Altceltischer Sprachschatz III,
> Leipzig 1907: 862).
> Bìd 'chirp' is probably another word (see MacBain), but bìd 'nip',
> instead of a loan from bit (also fit for horses), can be its
> corresponding Celtic cognate; a loan from a (relatively recent)
> Caledonian Brythonic *bid = Welsh bid < *bi:tiu-s wouldn't leave
> Continental biddu[ completely unexplained.
> As for reconstruction, Old Indic bhinná- 'broken &c.' expectedly
> means 'a fragment, bit, portion' as a m. substantive (Sir Monier
> Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary Etymologically and
> Philologically Arranged with special reference to Cognate
> Indo-European Languages, Oxford 1899 : 757); its prototype *bhid-nó-s
> would regularly yield Celtic *biddo-s (cf. MacBain 1911: 36 *bid-do-)
>> Gaulish *Biddos (*<Biddus>, maybe directly attested by Bingen
> <biddu[>).
> Bidet < *biddittus < Gaulish *bidditto-s < Celtic *bidd[o]-itto-s
> < PIE *bhid-nó- 'bit' + *it-nó-s (√*yet- > Old Indic yatate 'stretch >
> place in order, marshal, join, connect; keep pace, be in line, rival;
> associate, march together with, conform, comply with; meet, encounter;
> tend towards; endeavour to reach, strive after, be eager or anxious
> for; make effort, persevere, be cautious or watchful; join, nuite,
> attach to' &c.) 'attached with a bit'.
> This was my proposal: *bidditto-s 'attached with a bit' (vs.
> *am[bi]-uog-it-ittus 'small (animal) carrying (packed) on both sides
> repeatedly or regularly'; no truncation am- > 0, no betacism /v/ >
> /b/, no loan Occitanic > rest of Western Romance; comparative Goidelic
> and possibly epigraphic evidence)
>
> 2012/10/16, dgkilday57 <dgkilday57@...>:
>>
>> French <bidet> 'small horse, pony, nag' (attested since 1564); 'basin for
>> washing private parts' (since 1739); 'trestle' is of obscure origin. It
>> appears to be connected with Old French <bider> 'to trot' (15th century)
>> and
>> <rabider> 'to run toward quickly' (14th c.). Italian <bidetto> 'small
>> horse' (since 1598) is evidently borrowed from French, not the other way
>> round. Savoyard <bidet> means 'donkey'.
>>
>> Diez hypothesized a Celtic root *bid- 'small' attested nowhere else.
>> Gamillscheg suggested a phonologically unjustified connection with the
>> root
>> of Piemontese <bodero> 'thick' and related words, an obscure group in
>> itself
>> (Meyer-Lübke, REW 1085, 1182a). Bolelli regarded the verb <bider> as
>> primary, and noting its isolation in the FEW, ascribed it to
>> onomatopoeia,
>> but without citing any allegedly onomatopoeic formations in *b-d-
>> elsewhere
>> to support this (L'Italia Dialettale 17:155-6, 1941).
>>
>> Trying to do better, we look first at French <vider> 'to empty, leave,
>> vacate' as a phonological parallel, along with the corresponding
>> adjective
>> <vide> 'empty, void, vacant'. The former continues OFr <voidier> ca.
>> 1160,
>> <vuidier> 1313; the latter <voide> ca. 1100, <vuide> (fem.) ca. 1261,
>> <vuit>, <vit> (masc.) ca. 1200. Early etymologists attempted to derive
>> these from Latin <vidua:re> 'to deprive of', <viduus> 'deprived, bereft,
>> widowed', but this requires ad-hoc assumptions. The acceptable solution
>> was
>> given almost simultaneously by Schuchardt (Romania 4:256-7, 1875) and
>> Thomsen (ib. 257-62). These words are to be referred to Low Latin
>> *vocita:re 'to empty' and *vocitus 'empty'.
>>
>> In this position it appears that Latin [k] first underwent affrication to
>> [c^], then voicing to [j^] (falling together with the reflex of Lat.
>> [g]),
>> then lenition to the semivowel [j], resulting in *-oji- which was reduced
>> to
>> the diphthong *-oi- in Continental West Romance (e.g. Old Italian <voito>
>> 'empty, void', later <voto>, <vuoto>; <voitare> 'to void'). It is
>> noteworthy that Lat. <co:gita:re> 'to think' has yielded OFr <cuidier>,
>> OIt
>> <coitare>, later <cotare>, Old Spanish <coidar>, later <cuidar>. Not
>> only
>> has the k/g voicing distinction been neutralized in this environment, but
>> also the o/o: length distinction.
>>
>> It must also be remarked that OFr <cuit> 'cooked' (continuing Lat.
>> <coctum>)
>> retains the diphthong today, but <vuit> and <vuide> became <vit> and
>> <vide>
>> (at different times in various dialects). This is to be explained by the
>> dissimilative effect of the preceding labial. It might be objected that
>> OFr
>> <puiser> 'to draw liquid' (since ca. 1160) has not been similarly
>> monophthongized by the labial. This verb cannot be separated from its
>> primary noun <puits> 'well' (<puz> ca. 1120, <puiz> ca. 1165, continuing
>> Lat. <puteum>), whose vocalism has been influenced by Germanic words for
>> 'pit'. Frankish *putti can be restored on the basis of Old High German
>> <pfuzzi> (cf. Old English <pytt>).
>>
>> This suggests that OFr <bider> may have arisen by labial dissimilation
>> from
>> *buidier, earlier *boidier, continuing a Low Latin *bocita:re (*bog-,
>> *bo:c-, *bo:g-). No source for any of the four possible roots
>> immediately
>> shows itself. It may be, however, that the simple verb was extracted from
>> a
>> prefixed verb which underwent regular changes. Pack animals carry packs
>> on
>> both sides, so a very plausible base for the verb could be Celtic
>> *ambi-wogos 'carrying on both sides'. The prefix *amb(i)- is well
>> attested
>> in Gaulish, and reflexes of PIE *weg^H- 'to bear, carry, transport' are
>> known in other Celtic languages. Formation of the active /o/-grade
>> *ambi-wogos would be parallel to Greek <amphíxoos> 'polishing on both
>> sides'.
>>
>> Difficulties crop up in attempting to derive a Gallo-Latin *ambogita:re
>> (whence *bogita:re and <bider>) from Gaulish *ambivogos. Haplology has
>> evidently produced *ambosta: from Celtic *ambi-bosta: 'that which one
>> gets
>> both hands around', independently in Insular Celtic (Old Irish <imbas>)
>> and
>> on both sides of the Pyrenees (OSp <ambuesta>, Piem. <ambosta>, etc.; REW
>> 411b; Bolelli, ItDial 17:139, 1941). To develop in place from
>> *ambivogos,
>> Gallo-Latin *ambogita:re would require that *ambiv- be either
>> progressively
>> haplologized to *amb-, or assimilated to *ambib- before the haplology.
>> Neither seems likely. In fact if Anvers (Flemish Antwerpen) continues
>> the
>> name of the ancient Ambivarii, while Ambières continues that of the
>> Ambibarii, the reflexes of *ambiv- and *ambib- have remained distinct
>> into
>> modern times. On this basis Gaul. *ambivogos might be expected to yield
>> a
>> Low Latin *anvogita:re, early OFr *anvoidier, which cannot produce the
>> /b/
>> of <bider>.
>>
>> The dialect of Perpignan has <abit> 'grandfather', against Paduan <aví>,
>> from Latin <avi:tus> 'grandfatherlike' (Tappolet, Die romanischen
>> Verwandtschaftsnamen 63, 1895; REW 834). This suggests early fortition
>> of
>> intervocalic -v- to -b- in (at least some) northern Pyrenaean dialects of
>> Late Latin, so that a Gaulish loanword *ambivogos could indeed become
>> *ambibogus, and perhaps by early haplology *ambogus, here. Such a word,
>> if
>> it found its way into central Gaul, could then yield Gallo-Latin
>> *am(bi)boga:re 'to carry (packs) on both sides' with a frequentative
>> *am(bi)bogita:re 'to carry (packs) on both sides repeatedly or regularly,
>> to
>> be a pack-animal'. Now, we have <bu:rere> 'to burn' already in the Latin
>> Dioscorides by redivision of <amb-u:rere> 'to burn around', and a by-form
>> *bu:ra:re implied by the gloss "buratum : incensum" (CGL 5:272.43). Thus
>> nothing obstructs the extraction of Low Latin *bogita:re 'to be a pack
>> animal, to move like a pack animal, to trot' which will give us OFr
>> *boidier, *buidier, <bider>. The noun <bidet> stands to <bider> as
>> <jouet>
>> 'plaything' to <jouer> 'to play' and other deverbatives in -et to their
>> verbs.
>>
>> To explain the presumed route of *ambivogos through the Pyrenees, one
>> possibility is that Asturian ponies were exported under this name as
>> pack-animals. A heavy ancient Celtic presence in Asturias is undeniable
>> and
>> to me it is reasonable that this was the P-Celtic homeland. The Asturian
>> pony was known to Pliny (8:166) as <celdo:>, which has a variant
>> <thieldo:>,
>> apparently related to Basque <zaldi> 'horse' and Berber <aserdun> 'mule'.
>> I
>> do not know whether this word is native to the area or borrowed from
>> Phoenician (as I suspect the 'silver' word is), but its use does not
>> preclude a separate Gaulish term for the animal in its capacity as a
>> beast
>> of burden.
>>
>> By way of disclaimer, I must admit that I do not KNOW whether the
>> foregoing
>> scenario is historically correct, or even close. It is merely an outline
>> of
>> ONE possible mechanism by which <bidet> MIGHT be explained without
>> recourse
>> to onomatopoeia or an isolated root.
>>
>> DGK
>>
>>
>>
>