Talk:fero

Etymology for other stems in Latin
I've added etymological information for the stem tuli- but was unsure about the stem lāt-. I believe the lāt- stem comes from the same source as the tul- stem but was not entirely sure so I did not add it. See here for source which suggests that lāt- is from the same PIE root as tuli. 58.7.64.169 05:46, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

http://books.google.com/books?id=5hwtAAAAYAAJ&q=latus#v=onepage&q=latus&f=false (Page 228) What does this mean?

174.67.247.165 03:35, 15 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure what you're getting at. The book is from almost 2 centuries ago, and makes some assumptions about the relation of Latin to other languages that have long since been thoroughly discredited. There are a number of things on that page that can be refuted, but you're going to have to be more specific If you want to know more. At any rate p.228 doesn't mention fero, which is the topic of this page Chuck Entz (talk) 04:00, 15 December 2012 (UTC)


 * The book is laughable. But the quote on the cover in Latin is quite nice. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 06:15, 15 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Looking at the entry for lātus, which is really page 222 , he derives it from an earlier *tlatus, which is still considered correct (as *tlātus), but assumes that Greek was the source, which is wrong (both are derived from Proto-Indo-European). Chuck Entz (talk) 20:36, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Is actually attested in Latin? If so, all instances of  should be orphaned, otherwise the other way around.  20:41, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't think so. Perseus doesn't have it (except as a mention in a discussion of sound changes in English), and it would seem wrong phonotactically, though there's at last one proper noun borrowed from Greek that's spelled with an initial tl. Several works in Google Books have the asterisk, so it looks like the general assumption is that it isn't attested. Valpy himself doesn't actually say whether it's attested- I wouldn't read anything into the lack of an asterisk in an early-19th-century work. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:17, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, if it's not right phonotactically, then that's why it disappeared, isn't it? :) I'm just wondering if it disappeared late enough to be attested. Some Latin texts may have more archaic features than others (like ). 21:35, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
 * That's different; *stlocus, *tlatus, and friends simply don't belong in a Classical work. They're not equally archaic. Anyway, I think Perseus doesn't cover inscriptional stuff; I'd assume that the reason everyone's asterisking it is that the paltry inscriptional corpus doesn't cover it. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 23:03, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Chuck, you write "Looking at the entry for lātus... he derives it from an earlier [*tlātus]... but assumes that Greek τλητός (tlētos, “bearable”) was the source, which is wrong (both are derived from Proto-Indo-European)." but I find this somewhat perplexing as PIE is a reconstructed language & any etymological derivations from PIE would require the use of a flux capacitor. PIE is itself a modern phonetic experiment. A comparative work of reference, PIE depicts theoretical linguistic origins which are based on numerous connections among a vast number of Indo-European languages.

My point is that perhaps the strategic use of the abbreviation "cf." is in order. Lostubes (talk) 12:10, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Etymologies are rarely without what you would probably characterize as guesswork. Of course PIE is an artificial construct, and nothing is 100% provable- that's why we write PIE form with asterisks, and don't allow PIE entries in the main part of the dictionary. Still, it's been refined and tested over centuries, and discovery of new languages such as Hittite, Tocharian and Mycenaean Greek has provided support for some of its more counter-intuitive features such as laryngeals. It's quite reasonable to say in this context that both the terms mentioned are derived from PIE, even if we have no direct evidence.

As for my comments about the book- the author believed that Latin was derived directly from Greek, which doesn't fit the data for Latin or for Greek, and giving the Attic Greek form as the source is worse, because it has a change of long a to something like a long e that would have had to have somehow reversed itself to produce the Latin long a. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:41, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Multiple senses in the Latin entry
This entry first gives ferō "bear, carry", with an etymology section, and then gives ferō (noun), ablative singular of ferus, and doesn't have a separate etymology section. Latin ferus has an unrelated etymology (PIE *ǵʰwer-). The entry layout description here: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Entry_layout#Etymology seems to say that in such a case, there should be another etymology section: "Sometimes two words with different etymologies belong in the same entry because they are spelled the same (they are homographs). In such a case there will be more than one “Etymology” header, which we number."

So, in this case and in other cases like it, should there be an additional header, "Etymology 2", added? I understand that inflections generally don't get their own etymology sections, but in this case it's confusing because it looks like it's still under the first Etymology header. T039mwftulnm0l (talk) 20:23, 15 January 2024 (UTC)