Celtic *dubro- 'water' and the flood myth

Celtic *dubro- 'water' is attested on Old Irish dobur and Middle Welsh dwfr, dwr, as well as in Gaulish anthroponymy and toponomy (Dubra, Uerno-dubrum)¹. Incomprehensibly, the Celtic specialist Ranko Matasović conflates this word with an homonymous adjetive (Middle Irish dobur 'black, unclean') corresponding to *dubu- 'dark'. On the other hand, some Indo-Europeanists have suggested a link with the same IE root found in *dubno- 'deep', which referred to the Underworld in ancient mythology. However, none of these proposals looks convincing to me².

Fortunately, Delamarre quotes the seemingly related Illyrian gloss dúbris 'sea'³. This makes me think it could be related to Hebrew ʕbr, Arabic ʕbr-[u]- 'to inundate, to invade', conflated by Militarev with the homonymous root *ʕVbur- found in Akkadian ebēru 'to cross (water); to extend beyond (something)' and which in turn would derive from Afrasian *ʕa-bir- 'to travel (along a road), to pass by, to cross (rivers)', cognate to IE *per- 'to ferry'. Another homonymous Semitic root reconstructed by Militarev is *ʕa/ibr- 'river bank', which I'd link to Germanic *ōfVr- 'bank, shore'.  

IMHO this would be part of the Paleo-IE 'water' complex root studied by the Spanish Indo-Europeanist Francisco Villar⁴, which includes *ab- (Celtic *abon-, Latin amnis 'river'), *up- (Lithuanian ùpē, Letonian upe 'river'), *a(:)p- (Sanskrit ā́paḥ 'water', Tocharian āp 'water, river'). 

This etymology would point to a post glacial environment where rapid rising sea levels caused great extensions of land to be flooded, as in the Black Sea Flood, first proposed by William Ryan and Walter Pitman in 1997⁶. According to these authors, the former Black Sea was a freshwater lake feeded with glacial meltwater and whose level was 90 m below the Mediterranean. Around 5,600 BC, the rising sea level caused the Bosporus to broke, forming a giant cascade. This event caused the exode of the people living in the flooded areas (more than 150,000 km² of land), contributing to the spreading of a flood myth in several cultures.

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¹ R. Matasović (2009): Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Celtic, p. 107.
² Although my colleague Ishinan suggested a link to Classical Arabic dibār/dabra-h 'water channel', IMHO this is related to the other 'channel' words mentioned here. 
³ X. Delamarre (2008): Dictionnaire de la langue gauloise, p. 151-152.
⁴ F. Villar et al. (2011): Lenguas, genes y culturas en la prehistoria de Europa y Asia suroccidental.
⁶ W. Ryan & W. Pitman (1998): Noah's Flood.

Celtic *koret- 'palisade'

A palisade

Celtic *koret- 'palisade' (Middle Irish cora, Middle Welsh cored, Old Breton coret)¹ has been linked by some Indo-Europeanists to Germanic *xurdí-/*xúrθi- and Latin crātis 'hurdle'², from an IE protoform whose meaning can be reconstructed as 'to weave'. 

A hurdle

However, IMHO this etymology is semantically unsatisfactory, as hurdles were traditionally made from wattle (woven split branches), while palisades are made from stakes planted vertically on the ground. This is why I'd prefer to derive the Celtic word from a different protoform *s-korHt- 'twig, pole' found in Baltic (Lithuanian kártis 'think stick, latte, stake', Latvian kãrts 'rod; a measure of length') and Germanic (Old Norse skorδa 'support, rod'), in a pars pro toto etymology.
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¹ R. Matasović (2009): Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Celtic, p.216.
² Whose diminutive form crātīcula is the origin of French grille 'grill' and similar Romance words.

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.

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^{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.

Medieval Latin *dēvetu- 'obstacle, prohibition' (updated)

Italian divieto 'prohibition', Old Spanish deviedo 'reserve (of land); prohibition, ecclesiastic censorship' and Basque debetü (Z) 'illicit', debeku (G, HN, Bazt, L, LN) 'prohibition' derive from Medieval Latin *dēvetu- 'obstacle, prohibition'¹, the participle of the verb dēvetāre 'to forbid, to impede'² (non attested in Classical Latin), usually regarded as a compound from the prefix *dē- 'from, away' and vetāre 'to forbid'³. 

The Latin verb is cognate to Celtic *wet- 'to speak' (Old Welsh guetid, Middle Welsh dyweddy 'speaks'), from which developped the form *woto- (Middle Welsh gwadu 'to deny', Old Breton guad 'denial')'⁴. From these forms and Hittite uttar 'word', Indo-Europeanists reconstruct an IE root *wet(H2)- 'to say, to forbid'⁵.

However, in Romance the meaning 'to impede' is usually represented by Latin dēfendere 'to move away; to reject'⁶, whose feminine participle is dēfēnsa- (Catalan devesa, Spanish dehesa 'meadow, pasture (usually fenced)').
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¹ The meaning 'obstacle' is reflected in the Basque compound gernu-debeku (Bazt, L) 'urine retention', whose first member is gernu 'urine'. 
² The corresponding Basque forms are debetatü (Z), debekatu (G, HN, Bazt, L, LN), debekau (B), bedekatu (B), bedekau (B) 'to forbid', for which Rohlfs proposed an etymology from *impedicāre 'to impede', which I consider semantically inadequate. 
³ Reflected in Spanish vedar 'to forbid, to impede', whose participle vedado 'reserve (of land)' has replaced deviedo in the modern language.  

⁴ R. Matasović (2009): Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Celtic. p. 418.

⁵ Similar to *wed- 'to raise's one voice', attested in Germanic, Balto-Slavic, Tocharian, Greek and Indic.
⁶ Which in some languages (e.g.  French défendre) also developped the meaning 'to forbid'.