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Etymological GAME | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| vermillon Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4679 days ago 602 posts - 1042 votes  Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, German | Message 17 of 18 02 October 2012 at 4:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
The wikitionary (whose source I don't know) claims it's rather PIE *merə- (“to rub, wipe; to pack, rob”). But well, "death" is not unbelievable.. edit: and "from Proto-Indo-European *(s)merd- (“to bite, sting”)" as the etymology of "smart". Cognates in Greek and Sanskrit give a 'd' as well, and don't seem to mention more than that. Edited by vermillon on 02 October 2012 at 5:15pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| viedums Hexaglot Senior Member Thailand Joined 4667 days ago 327 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Latvian, English*, German, Mandarin, Thai, French Studies: Vietnamese | Message 18 of 18 03 October 2012 at 7:16am | IP Logged | |||||
Yes, I was surprised to see the connection made between ‘mordere’ and death. I’ve just checked Pokorny’s Indogermanisches etymologisches Woerterbuch, which is available at openlibrary.org. The relevant entries are on p. 735 in vol. 2: 4. mer-, merǝ- ‘sterben’ (= 5. mer- ‘aufgerieben werden’). 5. mer-, merǝ- ‘aufreiben, reiben’ und ‘packen, rauben’. This seems to be saying that the term for death derives from ‘being rubbed out’! I guess when we use ‘rubbed out’ meaning killed in English, we are thinking along the same lines as the ancient Indo-Europeans. Note also the glosses for the Greek ‘marasmos’. I’m still not clear on how we get from rubbing to biting though. Looking through the glosses in entry 5., I notice that ‘nagen’ or ‘to gnaw, chew’ is one. But ‘mordere’ and its reflexes aren’t cited directly. Maybe this is the source of the discrepancy between our two online sources. Still, I could envision a semantic continuum along the lines of death – erasure – wearing down – eating away – biting, or something like that. Pokorny's IeW 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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