Dariusz R. Piwowarczyk

This article investigates a certain irregularity in the Greek sound changes, namely that associated with the Greek form ϑ ήρ ‘beast’, assumed to come from the sequence */ĝhṷ/ but treated exactly like the aspirated labiovelar. It is shown that the examples upon which this hypothesis was built are in themselves quite doubtful and even though more examples of this change can be found, they still remain insecure. The sound change is then neither confirmed nor falsified but certain phonetic details of its process are investigated.

This article investigates the problem of the etymological connection between the Greek word ὀμείχω ‘to urinate’ and the agent noun μοιχός ‘adulterer’, the semantics of which has often been termed improbable. It is pointed out that the connection might be made more probable when analyzing the Latin data: the verb meiō, -ere ‘to urinate’ and its meaning in the Latin texts, which is not always restricted to ‘urinating’ but is also used as an obscene word meaning ‘to ejaculate’. We can then postulate that μοιχός was an agent noun of ὀμείχω in the meaning of ‘to ejaculate’ and this way as ‘adulterer’.

This article investigates the problem of the lexeme for ‘apple’ in the reconstructed Indo-European for which there are two roots possible, namely *meh2-lo and *h2ebol-, both meaning ‘apple’ or a fruit similar to it. The former has been usually taken as a borrowing while the latter as a true PIE root for ‘apple’. However, there are problems with this assumption – the presence of the vowel */a/ and the consonant */b/, both of marginal status, and the attestation of this lexeme mostly in the North-West Indo-European languages. It is shown that the lexeme in question might actually be an ancient Wanderwort.

This article investigates the story of the origin and the expanse of the term caesar in the Indo-European languages. A hypothesis on the non-existence of the diphthongs /ai/ and /au/ in Gothic is used to show that the borrowing into Gothic occurred from Greek and renders the Greek spelling practice. Due to additional facts concerning the monophthongization of the diphthong /ai/ in Greek and Latin it is hypothesized that they might already represent not a diphthong but a single vowel. Counter-evidence is also stated, as the precise way of the borrowing still remains unknown.