----- Original Message -----
From: <richard.wordingham@...>
To: <Nostratica@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, February 02, 2003 8:55 PM
Subject: [Nostratica] Re: General Rule


> OE had 'wesan dead' = 'die',

<steorfan> was the most common word, I think; also <cwelan> for a violent death.

> and Onions' Oxford Etymological Dictionary doesn't rule out OE *diegan or *degan as a possible, unattested origin.

I'm aware of that (the word occurs in West Germanic, including OFris.), but the fact that such a supposedly basic word is not attested even once in the huge OE corpus (while being common in Old Norse) clearly favours loss in pre-OE and borrowing from ON.

> 'kill' may be doublet of OE cwellan 'kill', and has E. Frisian cognate kuellen 'vex, strike, beat', the same meaning as 'kill' when first attested (C XIII)

Yes, but *kul-jan- is a bit uncertain, and <cwellan> (*kwal-jan-), the proper causative from <cwelan> _does_ mean 'kill' (rather than 'beat'), so the whole etymology is somewhat shaky.

Piotr