--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "o_cossue" wrote:
>
> On Galician and dialectal Portuguese anaco (Portuguese naco, Spanish
añico), Coromines proposed as base a Celtic cognate of Latin pannus,
*(p)anno-, so Galician / Portuguese (a)naco < *anna:kku 'piece (of
cloth) > piece (of something)', Galician esnacar ( < *ex-anakka:re ) 'to
tear into pieces', Spanish añico < *anni:kku idem (heard only in the
expression 'hacer añicos' = 'to tear into pieces').
>
Unfortuntaely, a link to Latin pannus can be ruled out because of the
lack of Celtic cognates, not to mention semantic difficulties. In fact,
Coromines proposed a root *ann- of unknown origin.
However, I think *a- in Galician-Portuguese (a)naco, Spanish añicos
is probably a fossilized prefix. The latter reminds me of Latin mi:ca
'particle; bit, scrap, pinch' > Spanish miga 'crumble'. From an
expressive variant *micca
we've also got Catalan mica 'pinch' and esmicar (< *ex-micca:re),
esmicolar 'to break into pieces'. I think the Latin word is a substrate
loanword whose original meaning was 'grain' vel sim.