From: dgkilday57
Message: 71665
Date: 2013-12-25
---In cybalist@{{emailDomain}}, <josimo70@...> wrote:Is there any IE cognate of Yule out of Germanic?
DGK: The PIE root of the 'Yule' words is *jekW- (cf. Seebold, KZ 81:117). A possible Greek cognate is _hepsía:_ 'a game played with pebbles; amusement, pastime' if the correct derivation is *jekW-ti-éh2 after Froehde, BB 10:297 (cf. Walde-Hofmann, LEW s.v. _iocus_). Along with this go Greek _homépsios_ 'playmate', _eph-_, _kathepsiáomai_ 'I scoff at, ridicule, deride', _prosepsiá_ 'a greeting or meeting' (Hes.), and possibly Laconic _apsíai_ 'festivals' (Hes.) if the anlaut was miscopied or falsely associated (perhaps with _aps_ 'back, again', since participants go back again every year).
If this connection is right, perhaps the sense of *jekW- was 'meet, gather, assemble' vel sim., with deverbal nouns meaning 'annual assembly, festival' retained as such in Germanic and Laconic, but in other Greek dialects coming to mean 'festival game', then 'game, pastime, trivial pursuit worthy of ridicule'. Of course, since we have no independent information on the original meaning of 'Yule', this is merely speculative.