Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium/2016/April

siew dai
RFV of the etymology. Read somewhere that it comes from Hokkien, Foochow or Hainanese instead of Cantonese. — justin(r)leung { (t...) 09:14, 1 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Hokkien native speaker tells me that it's not Hokkien for sure, and probably Cantonese. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 15:33, 1 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Research online suggests Foochow. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 15:40, 1 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I asked a HK Cantonese speaker and they wrote: "siew dai :　I don't think I've heard of this term, however, after googling I somehow think it might originate from Fuzhou dialect and used more often by Chinese in SE Asia.  It means less sweet like you said.    In HK we use siew tim (tim = sweet in Cantonese)." However, I suspect my friend may have come across the same internet sources as User:Metaknowledge|Μετάknowledge. Corroboration by a Fuzhou dialect speaker would be useful. - Sonofcawdrey (talk) 05:18, 14 April 2016 (UTC)
 * You seem to be the only active user who knows Fuzhounese. Do you know anything about this? — justin(r)leung { (t...) 06:18, 14 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Fuzhou dialect does not seem to have this. is ‹ciēu› ("few", colloquial), ‹siēu› ("few", literary), ‹siéu› ("young"),  is ‹diĕng› , and  is ‹tòng› , and there seems to be no other expression similar in pronunciation to siew dai. The only explanation in Fuzhou dialect is this is a corrupted form of  , but this may be a bit far-fetched. It is possible that this is dialectal Min Dong, but I consulted a Min reference book and the affricate initial  for  in colloquial readings is observed across Min Dong dialects.


 * There is a possibility that this may be from Min Bei instead. For example, has the following pronunciations:  and . Wyang (talk) 11:27, 14 April 2016 (UTC)


 * , thanks for your input! So it seems like we've eliminated Cantonese, Hokkien or Fuzhou. Although Min Bei (or Min Zhong Sanming dialect ) does look close, I don't know if it's likely, since Min Bei (or Min Zhong) is one of the rarer varieties of Chinese in SE Asia. — justin(r)leung { (t...) 15:44, 14 April 2016 (UTC)


 * My thoughts exactly. Wyang (talk) 22:40, 14 April 2016 (UTC)


 * It might be Singaporean Hokkien - which is what a number of local speakers told me last night when I asked. I will consult with a few more today. Teochew is another possibility which I will pursue. - Sonofcawdrey (talk) 00:11, 15 April 2016 (UTC)
 * To return to the Cantonese hypothesis. The pronunciation of 底 in Cantonese is dai2 - so matches, as does 少 siu2, so perhaps it is just a case of local Singapore Cantonese differing from present-day HK and Guangdong Cantonese. - Sonofcawdrey (talk) 09:29, 15 April 2016 (UTC)
 * This is the only source that I can find explaining it with Cantonese. — justin(r)leung { (t...) 14:49, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

My current working theory is that it may be Singapore Cantonese, and also Singapore Hokkien, borrowed from Cantonese. My reasoning is that in HK and Guangdong they don't generally serve coffee Malay-style - i.e. kopi, kopi kosong, kopi siew dai, kopi ka dai, kopi gau, etc. with (or specified without) condensed milk, therefore there is no need for the term siew dai in those dialects of Cantonese where coffee is sweetened by sugar. Also, as with any other languages, there must be borrowings between the Chineses, including the Chineses of Singapore. This would account for why some informants say siew dai is Hokkien, since it is used in Hokkien sentences when ordering coffee here in Singapore. After checking dictionaries of Mandarin, Teochew, Foochow, Hakka, and Cantonese, the only one in which 底 is pronounced similar to 'dai' is Cantonese. - Sonofcawdrey (talk) 01:55, 16 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Not to dismiss your theory, but just to clarify, in Hong Kong and Macau, although sugar is the usual way to sweeten coffee, condensed milk is also used in what is called . Also, AFAIK, 底 in Hakka is also "dai", and in Teochew it's "doi", which is sort of close. — justin(r)leung { (t...) 02:23, 16 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Ah, you know more about coffee drinking in HK/Macau than me. As for Hakka I used McGiver (1904) who gave khi, and tí, and for Teochew I used Goddard (1888) who gave `ti. So, yes, my data may be out of date. - Sonofcawdrey (talk) 02:37, 16 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Yeah, the problem maybe there are different pronunciations due to different dialects or different contexts (e.g. literary vs. vernacular). From this Taiwanese Hakka dictionary, 底 is pronounced "dai" in the Sixian and Hailu dialects, but "de" in Dapu, Raoping and Zhao'an dialects. From this Hakka dictionary, it's "dai" in most dialects, including prominent ones like Meixian and Huiyang, and "dei" or "de" in others. From this Teochew dictionary, it's "doi" in the vernacular and "di" in literary. — justin(r)leung { (t...) 02:49, 16 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Okay, I've cut to the chase and altered the etymology to reflect the mystery we've unearthed. Do you think this is sufficient? - Sonofcawdrey (talk) 08:29, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I think it looks fine now, except the romanizations given are still in Cantonese, so should we mention Cantonese in the etymology as well? — justin(r)leung { (t...) 19:26, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, you're right ... had that as an afterthought. Anyhow, I've fixed it again, and it is a little lengthy, but that at least reflects the complexity of the situation. - Sonofcawdrey (talk) 23:57, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Great, I think it's good for now, unless we have any new evidence. — justin(r)leung { (t...) 00:21, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Have removed from entry.- Sonofcawdrey (talk) 01:17, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

χιών, χεῖμα, χειμών
For these I created the noun, with a source. But I'm puzzled as to how these three Greek forms relate to the PIE noun. Does anyone know? Any etymological sources that cover it? —CodeCat 01:16, 2 April 2016 (UTC)
 * * -om > -on; *-m[e]n > -ma. I can't say the specific descent, whether PIE > PIE > Gr or PIE > Gr > Gr. Lysdexia (talk) 20:57, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

== parentage between bʰeh₂g- and bʰeh₂ǵos and bōkijǭ and bōks ==

Which of the first two stems came first and did the other descend from that? Did the fourth stem descend from the third or first stem instead of the next stem? If so, can one put in the Germanic reflexes under the first stem unto book? Lysdexia (talk) 20:50, 2 April 2016 (UTC)
 * The first stem should further come from bʰāǵʰus like bʰewgʰ-. Lysdexia (talk) 22:23, 2 April 2016 (UTC)


 * A terminological quibble: is a stem, but  has an ending added to the stem, making it a complete word. Without looking at the entries to check, I would assume that  came from both: directly from , but, since   is derived from , from  as well. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:01, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

frango
This is said to be from, which is corroborated by De Vaan. But the -a- is left unexplained. The zero-grade form of a nasal-infix present would not give the Latin form, but rather something like, with the cluster presumably simplified in some way. The past participle, from, would give. —CodeCat 22:40, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Like you said, zero grade would regularly give us forms with "for-", which evidently isn't the case. If we go for a non-zero-grade, it looks like to me that we need a laryngeal for this guy. Hillcrest98 (talk) 23:55, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure there's a way to add a laryngeal to make this work. — JohnC5 05:31, 4 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Scratch that, I'll trust your suggestion. Hillcrest98 (talk) 12:13, 4 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Taking several comments by Sihler together (§§100.c, 124, 454.B.a), he discusses unexplained instances in which n̥ > an as opposed to en (apparently some argue this is the regular outcome before vowels). He claims that frangō is a “conflation of two well-attested and synonymous roots,  and ”, going on in a footnote to say that the latter root contained an n, not a nasal infix, based on Indic evidence. All of this taken together, I think he is suggesting something like **bʰrn̥G- > PI *frangō > L frangō. I'm startled De Vaan does not go into greater detail. — JohnC5 01:54, 4 April 2016 (UTC)
 * According to a rule I've seen Schrijver report for > : *R̥D > RaD (as if thru *R̥Tʼ > *R̥HD?), PIE  would give, missing only the nasal infix. --Tropylium (talk) 17:48, 4 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I believe the rule to which you are referring (*R̥D > *RaD) only occurs word initially and might be stated as *#R̥D > #RaD. — JohnC5 18:26, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

Schuyler
As discussed on the Wikipedia talk page of this name, a friend and I find it unlikely that "Schuyler" would have meant "scholar, student". We can't find any sources supporting that claim. Instead, almost everything seems to point to the meaning "someone who takes shelter" or "someone who lurks", with "creditor" being a second option. The reasoning is as follows:


 * When we read it, it sounds like /sxœy̯lər/, which would be the agent noun of "schuilen".
 * The surname Schuyler is not currently used in the Netherlands. (source: )
 * The surname Schuyler seems to be a corruption of Schuylder. (example: Philip Pieterse Schuyler's mother's maiden name was Van Schuylder)
 * The word "schuylder" can be found in a Dutch poem from that time period, where it seems to take the meaning "(there) lurked".
 * The word "schuylder" can be found multiple times in records from around 1440 of the magistrates' court of Helmond, where it takes the meaning "creditor".

I have no idea how the etymology could be definitely confirmed, but "scholar, student" seems purely based on what the American English pronunciation sounds like to American English ears. --Rhymoid (talk) 19:04, 4 April 2016 (UTC)


 * The literal meaning would indeed be "hider, someone who seeks refuge" from schuilen (uy is just a dated spelling of ui). And this makes more sense than one would immediately think, because the northern Netherlands were an asylum for Calvinist Protestants from throughout Europe, and vice versa Catholics from the northern Netherlands sought asylum in the south. The word schuilen is indeed used in this context: hidden non-Calvinist churches in Calvinist areas were called schuilkerk ("refuge church, hide church"). The alternation between Schuyler and Schuylder is of no concern: Dutch had a general tendency to insert -d- between -ler, for example "miller" is mulder in Dutch. --- Of course, all of this doesn't yet make it definite, just probable. Kolmiel (talk) 16:32, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
 * P.S. I accidently skipped what you said about actual attestations in the sense of "creditor". In that case it would belong with schuld ("debt"). That's also possible, but the uy would be dialectal in this case. I consider it less likely. But again: it's all just reasoning. Kolmiel (talk) 00:53, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

illuc
says it derives from an older form, from , the ablative of. Was the ablative of illic also formerly (sometimes) spelled illōc? Or was influenced by the usage "illūc locō"? Or why did, in becoming , take a detour through ? PS we're missing an "inflected form of" section on illuc. - -sche (discuss) 19:13, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

Gnaeus
We say this is possibly from Etruscan, but Wikipedia says it's from and was borrowed into Etruscan. Either way, the name is attested in Etruscan (so just move it to "Descendants" if it's not the etymon). - -sche (discuss) 19:44, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

Burmese ဆင် (hcang, 'elephant')
, and anyone else who may know: is 🇨🇬 a loanword from a Tai language and thus ultimately from 🇨🇬? —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 19:40, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
 * The argument on that page is that Sinitic borrowed the word from Tai-Kadai, based on the fact that elephants are far more likely to be seen in SE Asia than in NE Asia. I'm not sure I find that convincing, given that even basic words like "three" were borrowed from Sinitic into Tai-Kadai. Then there are also words like Mongolian that probably fit in (old borrowings from Sinitic?). I can't answer the question, but I felt it was worth bringing up the further complexity. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 23:12, 5 April 2016 (UTC)


 * The current etymology at 🇨🇬 was added by, and possibly used Axel Schuessler's ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese (2007) as reference. The relevant paragraph therein on Chinese is below:

"xiàng5 象 (zjaŋ)B LH ziɑŋb, OCM *s-jaŋʔ ? or *ziɑŋ ?, OCB *zaŋʔ 'Elephant, ivory' [OB, Shi].  [T] MTang ziaŋ < ONW zaŋ — [D] M-Xiàmén lit. tsʰiũC2, col. sioŋC2  [E] Area word (Norman 1988: 19): PTai *ǰaŋC, Saek saaŋC2 < z- 'elephant'; MK- PMonic *ciiŋ, PSemai *ciigŋ (-ii- instead of -a- is unexpected: Diffloth 1984: 63); TB-PLB *tsaŋ 'elephant' > WB chaŋA (-> Haka Chin siaŋ 'royal, governmental' from WB siaŋ-pahraŋ 'elephant lord', a royal title [F. K. Lehman 1963, The Structure of Chin Society, Illinois Stud. in Anthrop. no. 3: 39]); Lepcha tyaŋ-mo, Yidu Luoba ɑ33-tɑŋ55 [Zang-Mian no, 309].  Since it is hard to believe that people all over SE Asia and as far away as the Himalayan foothills would borrow a word for an indigenous animal from Northern China, the Chinese must have been the ones who borrowed this general area word like → hǔ1  'tiger' and → sì4  'wild buffalo'; the latter has the same rare OC initial as xiàng, Under these circumstances, xiàng prob. did not have an OC L-like initial. Furthermore, Boodberg (1937: 363) cites variants which may confirm a sibilant / affricate: an alternative word for 'elephant' zāng-yá [tsɑŋ-ŋa] (lit. 'bury tooth'), and a place name associated with elephants qiāng-wú  [tsʰiɑŋ-ŋɑ] (lit. 'pointed tooth'?). Xiàng is not cognate to → yù25 'elephant', nor is WT glaŋ 'ox' related which is cognate to → gāng5."


 * I'm not convinced by this etymology. It seems to rely on the assertions that elephants are not indigenous to the Sinitic homeland, and that this word is attested rather late, both of which are not correct. Archaeology shows that elephants were abundant in northern China in the earliest archaeological and literary records of Chinese civilisation (Mark Elvin's "The Retreat of the Elephants" - diagram). The character itself is attested in the  with the same meaning.


 * 象-oracle.svg


 * Shorto's Mon-Khmer Etymological Dictionary (2006) has the following paragraph on this area word:

"520 *[ ]ciiŋ elephant. A: (Mon, Katuic, Central Aslian) Old Mon cīṅ /ciŋ/, Modern Mon coiŋ, Kuy (ʔaː)ciːɲ, Bru ʔaciaŋ, Central Sakai chi‘k. Not explicable from Burmese chaṅ, on which see Benedict 1972 133 & n. 362; Shorto 1971 under the entry ciṅ1. (Skeat & Blagden 1906 E 49.)"


 * With regard to the Burmese word, what is known is it can be reconstructed at the Proto-Lolo-Burmese level as *tsaŋ ("elephant"), and is cognate with Proto-Karen *k-chaŋᴬ ("elephant", > 🇨🇬). This etymon may have been borrowed from a neighbouring Tai-Kadai or Austroasiatic language, although its tone (A) does not match the tones in Chinese and Thai (both B).


 * As for the Thai word, Pittayaporn believes ultimately it is borrowed from Chinese, specifically Early Middle Chinese. Pittayaporn (2009), in his reconstruction of Proto-Tai, says:

"This etymon is reconstructible at the PT, though ultimately from xiàng ‘elephant’ (MC zjaŋB; LH ziɑŋB; OC *s-jaŋʔ). Wuming (Zhuang) /ɕiəŋC2/, Yongbei /tsɯ:ŋC2/, Lianshan /θe:ŋC2/ among others are later Mandarin loan from the same Chinese etymon."


 * Compare the semantically related Sinitic loanword in Thai: > . Wolfgang Behr's "'To Translate' is 'To Exchange'" (2004) provides an excellent discussion on the attestation and reconstruction of :

"xiang 象 'to outline, depict, delineate, represent, map' Xiang is reconstructed as *bzaŋʔ by Baxter, but Sagart has convincingly argued that Baxter's Old Chinese initial *z- should generally be rejected in favour of *s- + [-nasal]-clusters, although he does not reconstruct this particular word. Even if conclusive xiesheng-information is lacking in this short series (GSR 728), it is clear from borrowings of the homographic word 'elephant', that we will have to posit a lateral cluster initial for xiang. Both semantic fields 'elephant; tusk' and 'to outline, delineate, represent, map' are found from the earliest layers of the edited literature onwards, whereas only the first meaning is amply attested in oracle bone inscriptions. It occurs only once, in a late mid-Western Zhou bronze inscription, as an attributive in the gift-list expression xiang mi 'ivory bow ends'. Schuessler considers xiang (< OC *s-ljaŋʔ) to be a loan from an Austroasiatic language into Old Chinese and Written Tibetan glaṅ 'bull, ox; elephant', then from Old Chinese into Tai-Kadai, from Tai-Kadai into Tibeto-Burman, and finally from there back into Proto-Monic *ciiŋ 'elephant'. Peiros and Starostin straightforwardly reconstruct Sino-Tibetan *lǎŋH 'a big animal (ox, elephant)' on the strength of the Old Chinese and Written Tibetan forms, as well as Jingpo u-taŋ 'bullock, steer'. Notice also that it is now sometimes assumed that the Common Slavic word, underlying Russian slon 'elephant', was borrowed from an unspecified Sino-Tibetan source. Needless to say, that the archaeological and geographical frame for the necessary contacts between Austroasiatic and Slavic speakers during the early bronze age, remains a moot question. Coming back to the question of the initial in xiang 'to outline, depict, delineate, represent, map' with its allograph xiang, first attested in the Chu silk manuscript, an argument for a lateral initial can also be made on the strength of yang  < OC *blaŋ-s, 'appearance, model, type'. The character, although found with this meaning only since the early medieval period, must certainly belong to the word-family of xiang 象~像. In view of its internal and external connections, xiang < *s-laŋ-ʔ 'to represent' might therefore be construed as an *s-prefixed denominative derivation from an underlying nominal base, which was in turn marked as deverbal by the 'exoactive' *-s-suffix formation, which gave rise to the Middle Chinese departing tone."


 * Old Chinese 象 is reconstructed as *ljaŋʔ by Zhengzhang Shangfang, and *s.[d]aŋʔ by Baxter and Sagart (square brackets [] indicate uncertain identity). The reasons given by Baxter and Sagart (2014) are:

"Clear examples of *s.d- and *s.dz- are difficult to find: a possible example of *s.d- is (565) *s.[d]aŋʔ > zjangX > xiàng 'elephant', pMǐn *dzh-, Xiàmén /tsʰiũ 6/; Proto-Tai *ɟa:ŋᶜ (Pittayaporn 2009: 327), Proto-Lakkia *dza:ŋᶜ (L-Thongkum 1992: 60); pMien *ɣji̯ɔŋB (the initial is unexplained), Proto-Vietic *ʔa-ɟa:ŋ  The Proto-Mǐn reflex *dzh- is explained if we assume that Proto-Mǐn still had *s-d- at the time of the first devoicing in dialects like Xiàmén, so the *d- was protected from that devoicing (which gave voiceless unaspirated reflexes); then we have *s-d- > *zd- > *dz- > *dzʱ- > [tsʰ]- by the second devoicing."


 * In all, it appears that Chinese (*C.laŋʔ, "elephant") is cognate with Proto-Tibeto-Burman *glaŋʔ ("ox, bull; elephant"). Chinese  underwent the sound changes: *C.laŋʔ (OC) > ziɑŋB (Late Han) > zɨaŋB (Early MC) > sʱiaŋB (Late MC) > sjàŋ (Early Mandarin) > xiàng (Modern Mandarin). During Late Han or Early Middle Chinese, it was borrowed into Proto-Vietic as 🇨🇬, coexisting with 🇨🇬. During Early Middle Chinese, either the Chinese or the Vietic word was borrowed into Tai-Kadai as 🇨🇬, and subsequently a branch of Tibeto-Burman borrowed it as Proto-Lolo-Burmese *tsaŋ ("elephant"). PLB then loaned it into Proto-Monic *ciiŋ "elephant". Wyang (talk) 02:49, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Wow, thank you for that comprehensive if slightly overwhelming answer. I've tried to boil it down to 25 words or less at ဆင်; please take a look and see if I've summarized it correctly. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 07:37, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, that is a very concise summary. Wyang (talk) 07:47, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

yrke
Is yrke a cognate of work? I was very surprised to notice it's not in the Svenska Akademiens Ordbok. --Espoo (talk) 05:03, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
 * It looks like it, yes, from Proto-Germanic . —CodeCat 22:50, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Could you add that, please? I'm not sure how to because I'm confused as to how that form relates to the Proto-Germanic and PIE forms listed for work. --Espoo (talk) 05:14, 7 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I've created an entry from the words I could find. If anyone knows anymore descendants, please add them. —CodeCat 17:30, 7 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for creating the entry, but I'm still confused as to how that Proto-Germanic form relates to the Proto-Germanic and PIE forms given as the etymons of work. --Espoo (talk) 03:59, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

-zr- > -br- in Italic
Currently we have entries that have -zr-, such as. But the Proto-Italic entry says that the change to -ðr- already happened in Proto-Italic. If that's the case, then there ought to be examples with -fr- in the other Italic languages. Are there any? Which standard should we maintain for Proto-Italic? —CodeCat 22:43, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Closes thing I can find in de Vaan is lat. as a dialectal variant of . Paradebeispiel cases like, , ,  apparently have no attested cognates elsewhere in Italic.
 * Proto-Italic status regardless kinda follows from relative chronology, since the change feeds into *ðr > br (and similarly *sr > *θr into *θ > f). --Tropylium (talk) 00:59, 7 April 2016 (UTC)
 * That's a good point. sr > θr must be of Proto-Italic date at least if it happened in parallel to zr > ðr. However, while Venetic does not preserve lone initial θ in any case (it shifts to f just like in the rest of Italic), I just recently found out that Venetic does not have *ðr > *βr, at least if "louderobos" is an indication (vs Latin ). So the sound changes are not exactly parallel: Venetic has θ > f, but it doesn't have ðr > βr. It might stand to reason that it also preserves θr, though we have no attestations of that. —CodeCat 01:31, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

Terms derived from *h₁lewdʰ-?
In his book, Ringe mentions a root verb, presumably from a root. But I'm not able to find any terms derived from this verb, or even from the root. We do have an entry for, but that has an entirely different meaning from the one Ringe gives, and it is an imperfective rather than a perfective verb, judging by the derivations. Can anyone find any descendants? —CodeCat 17:23, 7 April 2016 (UTC)
 * , the Epic aorist of . Also 🇨🇬 and 🇨🇬. Jasanoff (Hittite and the Indo-European Verb p. 223) calls "easily the best-established thematic aorist in the PIE lexicon". —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 18:09, 7 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Ringe says something similar about it. That's why I wanted it included, but I had trouble finding descendants and I stick by my personal rule (maybe we should make it a policy) that reconstructions must have either descendants or derived terms. —CodeCat 18:43, 7 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I've created the entry now. —CodeCat 18:50, 7 April 2016 (UTC)
 * It's already linked to from . I don't know whether it was only aorist in PIE; Greek has it also in the future and perfect, but in Irish it's only in the preterite (from the aorist). I don't know about Tocharian. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 18:54, 7 April 2016 (UTC)
 * That's really a matter of derivations, which we place on the root. Present, aorist and perfect were still individual verbs in PIE, the development towards a "paradigm"-type verb system with all three integrated into one was only just starting to occur by that time. —CodeCat 18:57, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

(Transalpine) Gaulish
The language code xtg words with but not with. Do we not allow Gaulish reconstructions in etymologies? I know nothing about the language—I'm just copying the etymology of and  from Wiktionnaire. If we don't use it, should I just skip the etymology, or do we call it something else here? Andrew Sheedy (talk) 20:44, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
 * We consider them dialects of just Gaulish, code . —CodeCat 20:47, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

Terms derived from PIE *luktó "get light"
Ringe mentions the deponent aorist, from the root. Is anyone able to find descendants of this, so an entry can be created for it? —CodeCat 15:50, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Hmmm.
 * MW (p.881/3, रुच) has the Rigvedic, which would be exactly the correct form given Sanskrit's substitution of -e < *-to; though I can't tell what the inflection is meant to be.
 * The Iranian branch seems to be of no help, providing nearly nothing outside of causative-iterative (which also abound in Sanskrit, Slavic, Hittite, and Latin).
 * Kloekhorst says the Hittite verb *lukk- was originally middle only and says specifically “The form lukta (OS) must reflect *léuk-to (or, less likely, *luktó?),…”. That could make part of this proposed paradigm.
 * LIV points to Tocharian A lyokät, for which I can offer little analysis except that Adams seems to have a lot of medio-passive formations in the past.
 * All together, I don't know. It certainly seemed to prefer the medio-passive, have an athematic conjugation, and have perfective reflexes. I notice that (which Beekes assigns to a full-grade *-ye- present found nowhere else in PIE) possesses no perfective forms and may speak to a full recreation of the paradigm. Indeed very few of the root inflections seem to survive outside of Anatolian, Tocharian, and Indo-Iranian, whereas secondary and innovative formations dominate the remaining branches. This might point to some irregularity in the original conjugation like a perfective medio-passive root. Alternatively, I might just be tired and babbling idly. — JohnC5 04:35, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Thoughts? — JohnC5 04:33, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Tibet
RFV of the etymology.

I initially reverted this because phrases such as "Historical linguists agree", "loanwords from Semitic Ṭībat or Tūbātt (Arabic: طيبة، توبات ; Hebrew: טובּה, טובּת)", and "itself deriving from Turkic Töbäd/Töpüt, literally: "The Heights" (plural of töbän)", led me to think this was a case of someone with no knowledge of historical linguistics regurgitating garbled bits of etymologies from other sources. After all, the forms given aren't from "Semitic" or "Turkic", because those aren't languages, and the words cited can't be Proto-Semitic or Proto-Turkic. Large and necessary chunks of information are simply missing. The fact that the references are partly mangled didn't help.

After seeing the edit history of Tibet, though, it seemed like there might be something to the etymology there that this etymology was obviously copied from, even if the copy is a bit of a mess- I'm skeptical, but this is out of my area of experience.

Is there any information in reliable references about the etymology of the word, and does it corroborate any of this? Chuck Entz (talk) 22:22, 10 April 2016 (UTC)


 * It appears to come from Oriens (Journal of the International Society for Oriental Research: 1994), Volume 34 here, pages 558–559. —Stephen (Talk) 04:36, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, but Google Books doesn't show me those pages, and I'm not sure I'm qualified to assess the validity of anything therein. Chuck Entz (talk) 05:00, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

Kabyle isem
Do we have a source or some other proof that this is a loanword from Arabic? It's definitely possible, but *(ʔi)sim is also reconstructed for Afro-Asiatic. So it might be inherited. Kolmiel (talk) 16:18, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Ordos
The etymology of Ordos needs a bit of a cleanup. — justin(r)leung { (t...) 22:48, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

拍拼
The etymology for 拍拼 doesn't seem reliable, since the term is not exclusive to Taiwan, but is also used in Fujian (Xiamen, Quanzhou, Zhangzhou). Also, 拚 itself already means "to work hard; to strive". I think it's a stretch to attribute this word to beating and cleaning. — justin(r)leung { (t...) 02:38, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

laoya
RFV for the etymology. This does appear to be Mandarin, nor even local Singaporean Mandarin. Neither does it seem to be Hokkien or Cantonese. - Sonofcawdrey (talk) 00:15, 15 April 2016 (UTC)
 * According to this (in the comments), maybe it's from Teochew, but I don't see the connection. — justin(r)leung { (t...) 06:35, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Ringe reconstructs this with a final -s, the usual nominative ending. But nouns ending in -h₂ drop this ending in the vast majority of cases (which is why the ā-stem nouns of the later languages don't have it). The descendants of this term don't seem to show any trace of the ending either. So I can't for the life of me figure out why Ringe adds it. Anyone have any idea? Should we move it to the s-less form? —CodeCat 00:44, 15 April 2016 (UTC)
 * De Vaan doesn't have the s. I'd always wondered why this term had it. I know of no explanation for it. — JohnC5 04:50, 15 April 2016 (UTC)
 * See my comment here. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 07:39, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

hola
Recent changes to the Spanish etymology section made the entry messy. In addition to this, no sources were provided to the affirmation that an Arabic origin of the term is today discredited. --Robbie SWE (talk) 09:58, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

finger
According to http://www.dwds.de/?qu=Finger a different etymology is possible (''kann auf eine Bildung mit ie. ro- Suffix zur ie. Form des Zahlworts fünf (s. d.) zurückgehen, so daß ie. *penku̯ro- anzusetzen wäre, das dann für ‘einen aus der Gesamtheit der fünf Finger’ gelten würde. Aber auch Anschluß an die Verbalwurzel von fangen (germ. *fanhan ‘fassen, ergreifen’) mit einem Ansatz ie. *penkro- ist möglich.''), but i can't add it because i don't understand what is meant with "ansatz". --Espoo (talk) 03:37, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Ansatz here means "postulation", a postulated form in a reconstructed language. Kolmiel (talk) 18:43, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

käsi
Interestingly, linguistics at the time when the letter F of the Grimm dictionary was written (http://woerterbuchnetz.de/DWB/?lemma=Finger) thought this a plausible etymology: "finn. käsi bindet sich mit hri capere". What is meant with "hri"? --Espoo (talk) 05:07, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Due to the non-italic script, "hri" must be an example word from some language, of which Latin "capere" is the gloss. I have no clue what language that would be, however. One might think about a misspelling of Latin hir, but that word means "hand" not "take". If no one can help you and you're really interested in this, it would be worthwhile to look at a hardcopy, because "hri" might be a mis-digitalization of something completely different. Kolmiel (talk) 18:55, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Given the earlier reference also to, a misformatted reference to seems the most likely. PIE  has often enough been compared with PU , though the match is fairly poor (once the later sibilation in  and  is discounted). --Tropylium (talk) 20:37, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
 * FWIW, Peter Schrijver once pointed out during class that the correspondence of PU *-t and PIE *-s (both plural suffix and 2sg ending) seems to point to a pre-PIE sound law changing (certain?) dental stops to *s word-finally, and the same could have happened here if there was originally an independent root noun (as, it turns out, we effectively do postulate). It's speculative, but would lead to one of the best (potentially inherited) lexical matches between PU and PIE – it can hardly be a borrowing in view of the phonetic deviation. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 07:46, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Forgot to ping. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 07:51, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes sure enough, this has been proposed by several people and probably is sourceable if we want to start listing Indo-Uralic comparisons with any systematicity. --Tropylium (talk) 10:34, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

انبه and amba
Something tells me that while these are probably related to Sanskrit, they probably don't come from Sanskrit, but rather from another Indian language. --WikiTiki89 18:00, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Nomen est omen
I can find modern use of the Latin nomen est omen in a few cultures (e.g. Dutch, Finnish, German, English), but was it actually used by the ancient Romans? The modern use seems to differ from what the wiktionary entry provides as origin:
 * The origin of this saying is attributed to the Roman playwright Plautus. In his play "Persa" the slave Toxilus lures his owner Dordalus to buy an expensive slave-girl named Lucris (“profits”) saying "Nomen atque omen quantivis iam est preti "

Plautus uses "atque" instead of "est". Did the Romans use "nomen est omen" as an expression? Did they use "nomen atque omen"? Or neither and is this a much later invention? Did the Roman believe in the concept of 'your destiny lies within your name'? Edwininlondon (talk) 18:33, 18 April 2016 (UTC)
 * The structures of the two sentences are different. Word-by word translations: "     " vs. "  ."  --Hekaheka (talk) 04:20, 22 April 2016 (UTC)
 * So if it is not from Plautus, where did nomen est omen originate from?  Is it a Middle Ages invention? Edwininlondon (talk) 08:12, 22 April 2016 (UTC)
 * English is full of proverbs and pithy sayings that are misquotations or paraphrases of quotations, why shouldn't Latin be? —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 18:05, 22 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I see. Is there any evidence of the Romans using it as a proverb? Edwininlondon (talk) 18:19, 22 April 2016 (UTC)
 * No idea, but keep in mind Latin survived the Ancient Romans by many centuries. It could be first attested in Late Latin, Medieval Latin, Renaissance Latin, or New Latin and still count as Latin. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 18:43, 22 April 2016 (UTC)


 * The earliest citation I can find is:


 * 1848, Ernst Keil, Der Leuchtthurm; Monatsschrift:
 * ... 1840 wurde von Kalbfell (nomen est omen!) in Reutlingen, dem Bedürfniß feiner Landsleute entgegen zu kommen, ...
 * - -sche (discuss) 02:17, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
 * This is from 1585: . The quote is right above the yellow highlight. --Hekaheka (talk) 12:22, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Latin grossus
Three years ago some of you guys came to the conclusion (correct, I think) that this word should not be derived from Old High German. However, our etymologies for English gross and for gros in several languages still use this etymology. They should be corrected, too. Kolmiel (talk) 23:09, 18 April 2016 (UTC)
 * if you look through Special:WhatLinksHere/grossus, you can find at least a couple of other instances. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:17, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

kurtchi - Persian horsemen
I am fighting to fight the proper etymon for kurtchis and would like some help. Can someone help ? --Diligent (talk) 14:48, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
 * it has the meaning of "persian noble/elite horseman"
 * my guess: it comes from Turkish or Persian.

βατός
This says it comes from the root, but it could just as easily come from instead like the present , as both the laryngeal and the syllabic sonorant would give -a- in Ancient Greek. Is there any way to tell which of the two possibilities it is? —CodeCat 19:12, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Hmm, you're right, the form is ambiguous: it could represent the root of the present stem or the aorist stem . I didn't have a source; I guess I assumed it was based on the zero-grade of the aorist stem, and analogous to  from.


 * One reason for my assumption is that it would be the most obvious synchronic analysis, and the most likely etymology if the word were coined later than PIE, but it could just as easily have been inherited from PIE and derived from the zero-grade of the present stem.


 * Another reason is that the aorist root may be more productive, since it clearly yields the perfect, and may also yield the future , though this could also be a result of the present root. In the case of the present, the development would be > (compensatory lengthening)  > (Attic-Ionic vowel shift) ; in the case of the aorist stem,  >  > . So the aorist root may be more productive than the present. It is also more transparent, since the future at least appears to originate directly from the aorist, if you don't know anything about compensatory lengthening and Proto-Hellenic palatalization. So, it seemed plausible to assume the aorist root also served as the base for  and , or that in the minds of speakers of the language, forms that actually developed from the root of the present were reanalyzed as deriving from the aorist. However, this is all speculation and perhaps not what the scholarly sources say. — Eru·tuon 03:06, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

etymology of and cognates to Old Norse verb sløkkva
Cannot find anything on Internet. Perhaps Proto-Germanic *slankwijaną ? --87.63.114.210 19:24, 20 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Sorry, too fast on the keyboard. --87.63.114.210 19:28, 20 April 2016 (UTC)
 * sløkkva (also sløkva and slekkja (with loss of -w-)) appears to stem from, the causative of . Hope this helps Leasnam (talk) 17:16, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Also, the two verbs above seem to only be attested in Old Norse (--hence, also in daughter languages of Old Norse, and in English as borrowings:, ). Leasnam (talk) 17:19, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Since labiovelars were one phoneme, would this not trigger the nonsyllabic Sievers' law variant, ? Velars are geminated by a following -j- in Old Norse, so this seems to give evidence for that. —CodeCat 17:42, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, if that is the case then it would. Thank you Leasnam (talk) 17:50, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I'd like to be sure, though. Are there other examples of -kwj- in Germanic? —CodeCat 17:58, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't see any in any of our entries; and the sources I use do not always adhere to Siever's, so if I made any, I'm sure they would be -kwij- :( Leasnam (talk) 18:17, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you. I was wondering: Is that always true regarding the gemination in Old Norse due to *-kj-? For instance *þakjaną gave þekja and not *þekkja, and *wakjaną > vekja? --87.63.114.210 18:19, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Levelling. The 2nd and 3rd person forms did not have -j- in Proto-Germanic, nor did the imperative or any of the past tense forms. So these could have been a source of analogy to level out the gemination. —CodeCat 19:38, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

hygge
My reading of https://books.google.com/books?id=giMRAQAAMAAJ&vq=hygge&pg=PA315#v=snippet&q=hygge&f=false is that hygge is:

From (c.f. hug)

per my edit https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=hygge&oldid=38029745

But an IP removed it with edit comment "that's incorrect" and puts:

From, from , from.

https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=hygge&type=revision&diff=38029752&oldid=38029745

...which seems implausible to me. Thoughts?

Talk to SageGreenRider 00:56, 22 April 2016 (UTC)
 * If it's from, where did the y come from? —CodeCat 01:14, 22 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't know how it came to be. I only read the source https://books.google.com/books?id=giMRAQAAMAAJ&vq=hygge&pg=PA315#v=snippet&q=hygge&f=false and it mentions hugyan etc. Plus "cosiness" seems logically closer to "comfort" than "thinking" IMHO.Talk to SageGreenRider 01:21, 22 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm not at all fluent in Danish, but it looks to me like the source you linked to may agree with the IP's version, once you allow for differences in orthography. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:36, 22 April 2016 (UTC)
 * And yet comes eventually from the noun, related to the verb . —CodeCat 01:36, 22 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Maybe. But "y" in Scandinavian often transliterate to "u" as in village "-bu" is English "-by" ,. What does "cosiness' have to do with "thinking" ? Talk to SageGreenRider 01:43, 22 April 2016 (UTC)
 * One could ask the same about with respect to being happy and glad, which is why I brought it up. It's not such a stretch. —CodeCat 02:03, 22 April 2016 (UTC)


 * The Old Norse verb hugga would yield Danish *hugge or possibly even *hogge. As CodeCat pointed out, the y has to be explained with one possibility by the i-mutation, which holds true in this case. The etymology of the term is explicitly sourced by and . --87.63.114.210 07:12, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

'Mal' Words for Speak
The Russian page for Молва (with related words like молвить) claims the word may have a relationship with Latin promulgare. It is related to other Slavic words like Czech "mluva" and Bulgarian "мълва". But the similarity to a bunch of Germanic words stood out to me. Dutch and German "melden", Icelandic "mál", Norse "mæla". The Germanic words all seem to have/had a "d" before or after the "l", the Slavic a "w" and the seemingly isolated Latin a "g". But maybe these final consonants are later additions to a common 'm*l' root? (Maybe earlier additions, but I'm thinking Vulgar Latin adding icare to verb roots which in some Romance would turn to "g" and could be shared from there. Are there classical instances of "promulgare"?) (Germanic could have added a dental as a noun suffix and created a verb from there.) (Slavic??? related to ба noun suffix??)

J&#39;odore (talk)


 * Have a look at the etymologies:
 * Latin is from  +, which itself means ,  -- the root of the Latin term is mulg-, not mul-, and  derives from 🇨🇬.
 * German is from 🇨🇬, in turn from 🇨🇬.
 * Icelandic derives from 🇨🇬.  We don't seem to trace this one all the way back to PIE.
 * Russian derives from 🇨🇬.  No PIE given for this either.
 * From this, it's pretty clear to me that the Latin term isn't related here. However, the Germanic and Slavic might be.  I'm not familiar enough with the reflexes between Germanic and Slavic; the Germanic þ might be equivalent with the Slavic v, but another user better versed in PIE would be better suited to answering this.  ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 08:23, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Germanic þ is definitely not equivalent with Slavic v; it can only match with Slavic t. Still, in principle the basic root could be the same, but with different consonant extensions in Germanic and Slavic (*mel-t- in Germanic, *mel-w- in Slavic). That sort of thing is quite common in Indo-European. However, Germanic cannot come from PIE *meldʰ- (which would give something like *meld-/mald-/muld- in Germanic) as our entry currently claims, but only from PIE *melt-. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 11:09, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
 * The Germanic is related to Russian, from PSlv  by metathesis.  is uncertain. It may come from PIE . Leasnam (talk) 17:07, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
 * If it is, then the Germanic has to be, not . All the attested forms have d anyway, it looks like. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 17:34, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
 * -lþ- > -ld- is a regular change in West Germanic. We'd need a non-West-Germanic descendant. —CodeCat 17:49, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
 * What about OHG ? We'd expect that to be *meltōn, wouldn't we? But it's only attested with a -d-. I've been wondering about this before. The German standard dictionaries derive it from Germanic *meld- without explaining it. However, there is also OHG, which would have to be *scult, but isn't. This might mean that OHG had occasional irregular revoicing (or lack of consonant shift) in Germanic -ld-. Or am I missing something? Is Grammatischer Wechsel involved? Kolmiel (talk) 19:16, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Apparently, the change happened at a point where OHG had already undergone the change of d > t. So it's an areal change, but it appears to have happened before most written records. One exception I know of is the 6th century Old Dutch phrase maltho thi afrio lito. —CodeCat 19:31, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that makes sense. Otherwise PG *-lþ- would have yielded OHG **-lt-. But I mean concerning the question whether it's or . OHG meldōn would speak (to me) in favour of the latter, but the literature says it's the former. An irregularity? Or can it be something else? Kolmiel (talk) 20:16, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Compare also . Philippa gives PG *meld-, not *melþ-. Same in the German dictionaries. De Vries says "etymologie onzeker". Kolmiel (talk) 20:19, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Well then those etymologies are just wrong. OHG can't come from . Compare a word that actually does have -ld-, namely . The OHG descendant has, predictably, -lt-. —CodeCat 21:15, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I know how everything developed in OHG, that's why I said it would have to be irregular. But the fact is that both German standard dictionaries (Kluge and Pfeiffer) derive it from that, as does the current Dutch standard dictionary (Philippa). Did they all just not notice? I find it hard to believe that. And what about OHG ? This is also exclusively attested with a -d-. Can you explain that? Kolmiel (talk) 12:15, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Old High German didn't invariably have sculd, we also find scult (the expected outcome). I cannot offer an explanation, but could this possibly be dialectal variation or earlier attestation ? Leasnam (talk) 15:39, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, uninflected scult, particularly in somewhat later OHG, means little because this will be due to final devoicing. You'd need an inflected form with scult- or scult in a very old text that doesn't otherwise show final devoicing. As far as I know, nothing of this kind is attested. The form sculd is 8th century, that's as early as it gets. Uninflected scult is attested, but the inflected forms invariably have -d-. I'm not aware of any exception. Kolmiel (talk) 14:03, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

je m'appelle
The etymology for seems to complicated. Wouldn't it be enough to mention something about "s'appeler" instead of overly analyzing each morpheme? — justin(r)leung { (t...) 00:25, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Agree, it's bloated. I cut it out and instead linked to . It's already decomposed under the "Phrase" header anyway. Hillcrest98 (talk) 22:01, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

argumentum a/e contrario
In some languages, the form argumentum a contrario is used, in others argumentum e contrario. Does anyone know why and what the original form was? --Espoo (talk) 20:09, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I think there could be two separate words here. I might not be on target, but: "a" is a short form of . The "e" is a short form of . Hillcrest98 (talk) 22:31, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

Glosses as "to feed, to graze". Is this a different root, or another sense of the same root ("to protect")? DTLHS (talk) 03:20, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
 * It's another sense of the same root. "Protector" came to mean "shepherd", which was then reinterpreted as "feeder, grazer". —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 12:52, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

wentelteefje
RFV of the etymology.

It looks like the obvious etymology is wrong, and an IP has added multiple paragraphs to explain why. Can someone concisely make sense out of this? Chuck Entz (talk) 12:40, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
 * The etymology the IP added comes from http://www.etymologiebank.nl/trefwoord/wentelteefje if that helps. —CodeCat 14:09, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I was aware of that, but is there any way it could be converted to a Wiktionary-style etymology, rather than a three-paragraph plain-text mini-essay with no formatting of any kind, let alone categorization? Chuck Entz (talk) 02:00, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

Old Persian 𐏃𐎡𐎯𐎢𐏁 (Indus)
What is the š in ? It appears neither in the etyma, nor in any of the descendants? --WikiTiki89 21:58, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
 * The . —CodeCat 22:06, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
 * That really doesn't answer my question. If the š came from s, then where did the s come from in the first place? None of the etyma or descendants have a final sibilant (other than obviously Greek and Latin, where it marks the nominative case). --WikiTiki89 22:12, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Don't the Indo-Iranian languages have the same nominative -s? —CodeCat 22:13, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
 * If they do, then that answers my question. I don't know enough. But then why does the reconstruction 🇨🇬 lack an -s? --WikiTiki89 22:14, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
 * My guess is that it's because PII reconstructions use the bare stem as the lemma form for nominals, like Sanskrit lemmas, and I think also Avestan lemmas. —CodeCat 22:18, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Ok. Then why don't we indicate that with a hyphen like we do with other reconstructed languages? And does that mean that none of our Sanskrit noun lemmas are actually real words? --WikiTiki89 22:23, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Pretty much. That's the norm in Sanskrit dictionaries though. Ask User:Aryamanarora. —CodeCat 22:35, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
 * But shouldn't we use hyphens for Proto-Indo-Iranian? And is this the norm in Sanskrit dictionaries written in Devanagari? Because I feel like leaving off the ending makes more sense in Latin script than it does in Devanagari, but I could be wrong. --WikiTiki89 22:53, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
 * In Devanagari, the final consonant of the nominative is a special sign called visarga, not a real letter. So it is somewhat understandable that it's left out. But you should really ask User:Aryamanarora, they know much more about Indo-Iranian than I do. —CodeCat 00:01, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
 * It's more complicated than that: the underlying final s is affected by sandhi, so you have to know what sounds follow to know whether the surface form is going to be a visarga (sort of like a final -h) or an s. Maybe someday someone will have the inclination/bot resources to create an -s and a -visarga sandhi-form entry for every thematic root that takes a final -s. For now, though, the root is the most important form, because all the dictionaries I've seen list entries by the root. The one I'm most familiar with, the huge Monier Williams one, has a combination of Devanagari and Latin scripts, but always lists terms by roots, whether in Devanagari or Latin.
 * It's not just the final -s either. Sanskrit has a very complex system of internal and external sandhi that affects a large percentage of the terms, and the rules interact with each other. A word can vary so much with the combined effects of inflectional endings, affixes, and sounds in nearby words that it can be impossible to recognize that the different forms are all the same word without working out the sandhi first. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:50, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
 * It is Indo-Iranian *sindhuš – *sindhu- is the stem. In Classical Sanskrit, nominative singular *-s became . We should make PII terms in nominative singular form, in accordance with PIE standards. —Aryamanarora (मुझसे बात करो) 14:02, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

kaura
RFV of the etymology:


 * From 🇨🇬, compare Karelian, Livonian , Estonian . Borrowed from a original akin to Old Gutnish hagri, dialectal Swedish . Old Norse , despite its similarity, does not appear to be directly related.

A Swedish IP removed the last sentence (added by User:Tropylium in 2009) as dubious. I reverted them, but this hinges on areas beyond my expertise.

The whole subject of European terms for oats seems rather murky: you have 🇨🇬, which our etymology claims is from a non-Indo-European substrate word, and cites 🇨🇬, 🇨🇬, and 🇨🇬 as cognates. Then there's 🇨🇬, which our etymology derives from 🇨🇬.

I would note that the Balto-Slavic group look like there might have been a satemized palato-alveolar in their history somewhere, in which case they would seem to be candidates for the source of this term, and less likely to be cognates of the Latin term (I'm a bit out of my depth here, so I could be totally wrong). It's interesting that all of these terms with a possible second velar are in the same geographical area.

I would also note that there might be some sort of folk-etymological influence involved in the Proto-Germanic term, with perhaps even a merger of an unrelated substrate term and the PIE term for goat.
 * The Balto-Slavic terms don't look inherited to me. The consonants (ž, z, s) don't match. —CodeCat 20:31, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
 * What exactly requires verification (as opposed to simple referencing)? This etymology has been standard issue for the last 250 years in pretty much any work treating Germanic loanwords in Finnic. E.g. comments (my translation):
 * "Nowadays the predominant belief might be [] that these germ. words [ etc.] are related to dialectal Norwegian and of different origin from Swedish etc.  < ."
 * The reference for the 'horse's tail' etymology seems to be . I'm not going to claim in a Finnish etym section though that and  would have to be unrelated: hence merely "does not appear to be directly related".
 * — If we wanted to connect the two 'oat' groups, I don't see how taking the BSl forms back to (as per ) helps, since the PIE-PGmc correspondences here appear to be *h₂ >> *h, *w >> *b/*g and *ǵ >> *z. The first correspondence, yes, could be handled thru early loaning to Uralic (*h₂ → *k), then Uralic → pre-Grimm's Law Germanic (*k → *k > *h), but the third correspondence by contrast needs direct loaning from Balto-Slavic to Germanic: Proto-Finnic had no **z, and also has initial stress, meaning Verner's Law cannot be invoked either after loaning to Germanic. And the second will be an even worse problem.
 * --Tropylium (talk) 22:14, 30 April 2016 (UTC)