On the etymology of Latin virgō ‘virgin’.

The following paper is intended to explain the etymology of Lat. uirgō ‘virgin’, which serves both as adjective and sub- stantive. There is a synchronic opposition in Latin between uirgō and mulier ‘woman’, the last of which clearly alludes to sexuality, in such a locution as mulierem reddere ‘to make someone a woman’. According to the Hittite formula natta=arkant- ‘not-covered, unmounted’, which is used for sheep and cows, this puzzling Latin word could be ac- counted for by a PIE privative compound *h1 í-h1  h-ō n ‘not-covered, unmounted’. This inherited vocable would eventually belong to the PIE root *h1 er h-‘to mount, cover’ which is likely to have been used by cattle-breeders.

The paper discusses the etymology of the ethnonym Orok, as used for one of the aboriginal populations of the Island of Sakhalin. It has been generally assumed that this ethnonym is connected with the Tungusic term for ‘reindeer’, especially since the Orok, also known by the name Uilta, are reindeer herders. The author demonstrates the unlike- liness of this etymology and proposes instead a connection with the widespread generic ethnonym Uryangkhai. This term was transferred on the Orok via the languages of their neighbours, the Sakhalin Ainu and the Sakhalin Ghilyak.

Yukaghir-Tungusic loanword relations.

The following article deals with the Tungus-Yukaghir lexical relations. For this the Tungus materials from S.M. Širokogorov’s “Tungus Dictionary” (TD), which are possibly borrowed from Yukaghir languages and traced back to Yukaghir forms in G. Doerfer’s “Etymologisch-ethnologisches Wörterbuch tungusischer Dialekte vornehmlich der Mandschurei” (EEW), which is based on the TD, are discussed.

Semantic developments in Turkish loanwords in Bulgarian.

Using the example of Bulgarian colloquial words with a Turkish origin, we trace their semantic development, taking the semantics of the etymon as a starting point and analyze the meaning of this loan in Bulgarian and in some of the neighbouring languages, such as Rumanian, Greek, Albanian and Serbian. For this purpose, we look at the following Bulgarian words: bakšìš, beljà, bìča, bimbàec, brakmà, čarăkčìja, čaršilìja, češìt, džumbušlìja, fukarà, gèle, git, kušìja, manàf, mušamà, siktìr, tajfà, and their derivatives. Besides written lexicographical sources we also use authentic material from sociolinguistic interviews (using the methodological approach, as described in Leschber 2007: 42f.). In doing this, we can show the embodiment/ rootedness of these words in traditional customs, in the history, slang, and complex loan history of every single word, as their semantic development is often rather independent from the original meaning of the lexical loan.

Ache, akimbo, and askance are words whose etymology has not been discovered despite numerous attempts to trace their initial form and country of origin. By contrast, the derivation of aloof is known, but it is instructive to watch researchers’ groping in the dark for more than two centuries and sometimes even now looking for a better solution. The etymologies offered below are entries in my prospective dictionary of English etymology. Each of them opens with an abstract of its own.