Latin costa 'rib; side, flank' (updated)

 

Latin costa 'rib; side, flank' has been traditionally linked by Indo-Europeanists to Old Church Slavonic kostĭ 'bone'¹, although more recently De Vaan considers this etymology to be dubious, among other reasons because of semantic mismatch². 

In fact, the Slavic word is undoubtedly related to IE *h₂osth₁- 'bone', although its initial velar stop can't be accounted for in the mainstream model³. The amateur linguist Glen Gordon proposes an early borrowing from a femenine variant of Semitic *kˀa(w)ʃ- 'bow'⁴ (cfr. Phoenician qšt⁵), with a semantic drift 'bow' > 'rib' > 'bone'.

In most Romance languages except Romanian, the anatomical meaning of costa was transferred to diminutive forms (e.g. Spanish costilla, French côtelette), while the main word specialized into geographical meanings: '(hill) slope' (e.g. Spanish cuesta) and 'shore' (Catalan and Italian costa), which spread as a Wanderwort: Spanish costa, English coast, Dutch and Swedish kust, German Küste, Danish kyst, etc. There are in addition Middle High German Gestade 'bank' and Old Irish ces 'flank, rump steak', césán 'flanks', which can't be readly derived from costa although they're semantically and phonetically close. 

This makes me wonder if all these words could be Semitic borrowings akin to or from Phoenician qsˁt 'edge, limit' (f.)⁶ < Semitic *kˀītʃˀ 'end, to finish' < Afrasian *kˀajatʃˀ- (HSED 1562), with Latin and German having got the femenine variant and Goidelic the masculine one.

____________________________________________ 

¹ A. Ernout & A. Meillet (1959): Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine, p. 146.

² M. De Vaan (2008): Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, p.140. 

³ Gamkrelidze-Ivanov regard these as different reflexes of a former *qʰ. See Gamkrelidze & V.V. Ivanov (1995): Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans, pp. 111-113.

⁴ G. Gordon (2008): Possible Proto-Semitic Loanwords in Pre-IE. 

⁵ Mª J. Estanyol (2008): Diccionari abreujat fenici-català, p 113.

⁶ Mª J. Estanyol, op. cit., p 112.

Greek kédros 'cedar', Latin citrus 'thuja; citron'

As most terms related to Mediterranean flora, Greek kédros 'cedar' (borrowed into Latin cedrus) has no IE etymology. There're also the derivatives kédris, kédron 'juniper berry' (actually a modified conifer cone).

On the other hand, Latin citrus, which designates two different kinds of tree, 'thuja' (citrum 'thuja wood') and 'citron'¹, is somehow related to the Greek word, possibly through an Etruscan intermediate².

In my opinion, these are instances of a Wanderwort of Semitic origin: *kˁtr- 'smoke, incense', referring to the aromatic characteristics of these trees, either the wood (cedar, thuja) or the fruit (citron). 

______________________________
¹ Whose Greek names kítron, kítrion, kítrea, are seemingly loanwords from Latin.
² A. Ernout & A. Meillet (1959): Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine, pp. 123-124.

Semitic *gVbVl- 'mountain; boundary, border'

Etymological dictionaries of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) such as Mallory-Adams¹ reconstruct two words for 'head', namely *ɣeβōl- (Tocharian, Greek, Germanic²) and *kapōl-o- (Old English hafola, Sanskrit kapá:la-), which show an alternation between voiced (traditional voiced aspirated) and voiceless stops³.

I consider these words to be loanwords from Semitic *gVbVl- 'mountain; boundary, border' (e.g. Arabic ʒabal 'mountain'), with a straightforward semantic shift. The Semitic word is in turn derived from Afrasian *gVbVl- 'bank, side' (Militarev), also reflected in Egyptian and Western Chadic and possibly related to *gab- 'side, bank; beach' (HSED 856).

________________________________________________________________________ 

¹ J.P. Mallory & Q.D. Adams (2006): The Oxford Introduction to PIE and the PIE world, p. 174.

² Although the Germanic meaning is 'gable'.

³ Although pairs like this (e.g. *gab- ~ *kap- 'to take') are by no way uncommon, they aren't explained in the framework of mainstream IE studies.

Semitic *gam(a)l- 'camel'

 

Semitic *gam(a)l- 'camel' is a widespread word which designates the dromedary of SW Asia and North Africa, first domesticated in Arabia before 2,000 BCE¹, and was borrowed into Greek kámēlos and in turn into Latin camēlus. 

This appears to be a Wanderwort which originally designated some wild ungulate of the Eurasian steppes and which is also found in Baltic *kumel-iā̃, Slavic *kobɨ̄lā 'mare' and in Altaic (with metathesis): Turkic *Kulum 'foal', Mongolian *kulan 'ass', Tungusic *ku(l)ma- 'maral (Siberian stag)' (EDAL 911).

_______________________________________

¹ Another species of camel, the Bactrian camel, native to the steppes of Central Asia, was first domesticated before 2,500 BCE.

Greek hēméra 'day' (updated)

 



In Greek mythology, Hēméra was the primeval goddness of the day. From this word and Armenian awr 'day', Indo-Europeanists such as Mallory-Adams¹ reconstruct an IE protoform *h2ēm-ər- 'heat (of the day)', which I link to Semitic *ħamm- 'to be hot; warm'², with the voiceless pharyngeal fricative ħ corresponding to the "laryngeal" h2. 

The IE protoform belongs to what I call "IE B"³, corresponding to the "IE A" protoform *səm-/*səm-ro- 'summer'⁴, whose initial s- is a consequence of the sound shift I call Fournet's Law, by which a post-velar fricative becames fronted to an alveolar articulation point.

_______________

^{1 J.P. Mallory & Q.D. Adams (2006): The Oxford Introduction to PIE and the PIE World.  
2} Also cognate are Hurrian am- 'to burn' and (possibly through an Etruscan intermediate) Latin amāre 'to love', amor 'love'.

³ Mostly represented in Eastern languages, mainly Greek-Armenian and Indo-Iranian, but occasionally also Celtic.

⁴ The ablaut form *sem- usually quoted in dictionaries isn't attested anywhere.