# German Leute, Russian люди - cognates ?



## englishman

Are these words cognates ?


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## CapnPrep

Yes. See this thread (#26), Pokorny (*_leudh_), and this page (under construction) for further information/more cognates.


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## englishman

CapnPrep said:


> Yes. See this thread (#26), Pokorny (*_leudh_), and this page (under construction) for further information/more cognates.


Thanks. 

1. I note that there seems to be the rather odd "liber-" (free) cognate in that list. What is the connection of this with the more obvious "people/grow" meaning ?

2. Are these two words the only cognates of this meaning still extant in IE languages ? I can't think of any others myself, offhand.


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## berndf

englishman said:


> 1. I note that there seems to be the rather odd "liber-" (free) cognate in that list. What is the connection of this with the more obvious "people/grow" meaning ?


The connection is with the meaning "offspring". A household, clan or tribe consisted of the children of the group, the free ones, on the one side and the the slaves on the other side.

There is a similar, though etymologically unrelated concept behind the Germanic word "free" which is related to "friend" and denoted the free man of the tribe, your friends as opposed to the slaves which were usually captured enemies and there descendants.


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## Scholiast

Greetings


> 2. Are these two words the only cognates of this meaning still extant in  IE languages ? I can't think of any others myself, offhand



What  about "lad" - or even "lady"? - masc. and fem. forms - on the  assumption, that is, that the primary IE sense is "person" as in Latin _homo_?


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## englishman

Scholiast said:


> Greetings
> 
> 
> What  about "lad" - or even "lady"? - masc. and fem. forms - on the  assumption, that is, that the primary IE sense is "person" as in Latin _homo_?


"lady" does not seem to be a cognate (http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=lady) and it seems to be unlikely for "lad" too: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=lad


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## englishman

berndf said:


> The connection is with the meaning "offspring". A household, clan or tribe consisted of the children of the group, the free ones, on the one side and the the slaves on the other side.


Is that speculation or can it be attested ? It sounds a little folk-etymological as it stands. For example, wouldn't it imply a widespread custom of families living together with their slaves, as a unit, for that meaning to have arisen ?


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## berndf

englishman said:


> Is that speculation or can it be attested ? It sounds a little folk-etymological as it stands. For example, wouldn't it imply a widespread custom of families living together with their slaves, as a unit, for that meaning to have arisen ?


You find it in every dictionary, including the Pokorny entry quoted by CapnPrep #2.


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## Scholiast

Greetings once again



> "lady" does not seem to be a cognate (http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=lady) and it seems to be unlikely for "lad" too: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=lad



I have looked at both these entries, as well as some others from etymonline.com, and to honest, I am not hugely impressed. I might be persuaded by "lady" being related to "loaf", Russian хлеб, AS _hlaef_ &c.

"Lad" though looks right, in the light of 






> Old English: lēod n.masc man, person, member of tribe LRC  lēodan vb.str to grow W7/ASD




This is in no spirit of contemely.

Best,


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## CapnPrep

berndf said:


> You find it in every dictionary, including the Pokorny entry quoted by CapnPrep #2.


Pokorny doesn't really stick his neck out about how the various senses are related. According to Calvert Watkins, "the precise semantic development [from 'grow' to 'free'] is obscure". 

But it's rather unreasonable, englishman, to require such things to be "attested" to avoid being dismissed as speculation.



Scholiast said:


> "Lad" though looks right, in the light of Old English: lēod n.masc man, person, member of tribe


_Lēod_ is indeed a reflex of *_leudh-_, but what makes you believe that _lad_ derives from it? There is no hint of this in the OED (the real OED), which reviews and rejects several other proposed etymologies and prefers to remain cautious: "of obscure origin".


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## Scholiast

Greetings once again...

...and apologies that for my last post in this Thread I had not found it possible to organise or eliminate the table. CapnPrep (#7) is no doubt right - as ever - that there is no such hint in the _OED_ (the big one), but there is precious little help anywhere else either. Collins and Webster have "origin unknown"_ vel sim_. But the indomitable frequency with which the word 'lad' crops up in British English, in all regions (though not always with the same nuances), points to an ancient origin.

In the conceptual cluster of "man"/"person" this seems _prima facie_ to make sense, and I submit that the _onus probandi_ is with those who would claim otherwise.


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## Outsider

englishman said:


> For example, wouldn't it imply a widespread custom of families living together with their slaves, as a unit, for that meaning to have arisen ?


It would indeed. Is that a problem?


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## englishman

CapnPrep said:


> But it's rather unreasonable, englishman, to require such things to be "attested" to avoid being dismissed as speculation.


Well, is it ? Either we have some direct evidence, or we have to speculate, no ? And I'm not really dismissing the point (that would imply that I know better - I don't), rather than being curious as to why anyone would think of that connection in the first place.


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## englishman

Outsider said:


> It would indeed. Is that a problem?


Well, it would be a problem for the etymological derivation if there were no evidence that such a custom was widespread. I'm no anthropologist, so I have no idea if such evidence is available or not.


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## Scholiast

All good wishes again



> Well, is it ? Either we have some direct evidence, or we have to speculate, no ?



"Speculation" does not necessarily mean "blind guesswork", It may also mean "rational conjecture", which is after all the stuff and being of Comparative Philology anyway.

And I still conjecture, I hope rationally, that "lad" / "Leute" / "людн" are connected.


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## Outsider

berndf said:


> Well, the concept of a Roman "familia" (="household") consisting of the "pater familias", his next of kin, the "filii" or "liberi" ("children") as well as the slaves is really O-level history stuff which can be found in any text book on Roman history and is not at all speculative.


And there were more recent instances in European overseas colonialism, though admittedly the topic here concerns Latin.


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## berndf

englishman said:


> Well, it would be a problem for the etymological derivation if there were no evidence that such a custom was widespread. I'm no anthropologist, so I have no idea if such evidence is available or not.


Well, the concept of a Roman "familia" (="household") consisting of the "pater familias", his next of kin, the "filii" or "liberi" ("children") as well as the slaves is really O-level history stuff which can be found in any text book on Roman history and is not at all speculative.



CapnPrep said:


> Pokorny doesn't really stick his neck out about how the various senses are related.


That liberi means _child/children_ in a legal sense is included:
  lat. _Li:ber_ `ital. Gott des Wachstums, der Zeugung, Anpflanzung', osk. Gen. _Lu/vfrei/s_ `Liberi', lat. _li:beri:, -o:rum_ `die Kinder', juristisch auch von einem einzigen Kind, also `*Nachwuchs';_li:ber_ `frei' s. oben;


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## Scholiast

Dear all



> That liberi means _child/children_ in a legal sense is included:
> lat. _Li:ber_ `ital. Gott des Wachstums, der Zeugung, Anpflanzung', osk. Gen. _Lu/vfrei/s_ `Liberi', lat. _li:beri:, -o:rum_ `die Kinder', juristisch auch von einem einzigen Kind, also `*Nachwuchs';_li:ber_ `frei' s. oben;



Exactly.

In an ancient Roman household there were _bambini_ crawling or running about all over the place. Few of the adult male members of the house would know exactly which of these little persons were their own progeny, and may not have cared.

The "free ones" - the _liberi_ - are those whom the father by choice picks up from the floor of the _atrium_, on the seventh day after birth, and explicitly by giving a name acknowledges as his legitimate offspring.

The rest are the offspring, legitimate or otherwise, of sexual liaisons elsewhere. Male or female, they become absorbed into the great morass of the slaves.

So the _liberi_ - the "free ones" - are the children who have been formally acknowledged as "legitimate".

A grim point, but true.


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## sotos

No etymological discussion is complete without some Greek. 
The Gr. cognate is _laos_ (people). The  connection with the _liber_ is found in the Gr. _e-leuth-eros_ (free), but the semantic relation is not clear. Possibly in the ancient societies with the free and the slaves, only the former were considered as real _laos_, the latter been perceived more of a commodity. However, the word for freedom (_e-leuth-eria_) may have the same origin with the words arrival, coming (e-leus-is). Notice also that the Gr. godess of pregnacy and labor was called Eleutho (Ελευθώ). Is this because  _people_ are _coming_ to life from somewhere?


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## Scholiast

Greetings, Sotos

The connexion ("Leute" людн) with λάος is completely persuasive.

I thought however that the goddess (of fertility and childbirth) was called Εἰληθυῖα.

Is this a change between ancient and modern  Greek usage?


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## CapnPrep

berndf said:


> CapnPrep said:
> 
> 
> 
> Pokorny doesn't really stick his neck out about how the various senses are related.
> 
> 
> 
> That liberi means _child/children_ in a legal sense is included:
Click to expand...

Yes, as I said, he lists the senses without wishing/wondering/guessing/speculating/conjecturing/hypothesizing/theorizing/explaining/demonstrating (or simply declaring) how the later ones developed from the earlier ones.

Did the "free" sense develop from the "child" sense (as you seemed to suggest), or vice versa (which makes more sense to me)? Direct evidence only, please.


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## berndf

CapnPrep said:


> Yes, as I said, he lists the senses without wishing/wondering/guessing/speculating/conjecturing/hypothesizing/theorizing/explaining/demonstrating (or simply declaring) how the later ones developed from the earlier ones.
> 
> Did the "free" sense develop from the "child" sense (as you seemed to suggest), or vice versa (which makes more sense to me)? Direct evidence only, please.


I only answered the question where the connection between the senses "people" and "free" was. And the answer to this is the send "child" in the context of the Roman law and social structure. This seems clear to me beyond reasonable doubt. I didn't really expressly state any direction in which the development should have taken place.

Now that you ask me, looking at all the different cognates listed, the recurring theme is clearly to _growing, belonging to the the same consanguineous group_. whereas the modern sense _free_ is rather isolated (Greek and Latin). The case seems clear enough to me that I find it reasonable to reject the onus of proof and assert that it rest with you when you say the opposite development "makes more sense".

Regarding the somewhat analogous situation concerning the Germanic word _free_ (meanings being _friends, belonging to the same clan_ vs. _free_), the situation is less clear (at least to me): Etymonline suggests that free is the derived meaning whereas Grimm regards _free_ as the original meaning relating the adjective to Latin _privus_ in the sense of "one's own" as opposed to "owned by someone else".
.


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## CapnPrep

berndf said:


> I only answered the question where the connection between the senses  "people" and "free" was. And the answer to this is the send "child" in  the context of the Roman law and social structure.


So how can ἐλεύθερος already mean "free" in Greek?



			
				berndf said:
			
		

> Now that you ask me, looking at all the different cognates listed, the recurring theme is clearly to _growing, belonging to the the same consanguineous group_. whereas the modern sense _free_ is rather isolated (Greek and Latin).


What do you mean by "modern sense"?  And the "child" sense is even more isolated, since it exists only in Latin… 

Ernout & Meillet give the following explanation, citing Benveniste and Westrup:


> On explique l'usage de _līberī_ par le fait que, pour le _pater familiās_, il y a deux classes d'individus, _līberī_ "les [enfants] de descendance libre" et les _seruī_; _līberī_ correspondrait au γνήσιοι παῖδες


In other words, many authors believe that the "free" sense existed before the "child" sense.


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## sotos

Thanks Scholiast. Ειληθυία is another form of Ελευθώ:
"_Barbara Walker maintains in her reference work The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and secrets that "women in childbirth prayed to *Ilithyia Eleutho*, the Goddess as Liberator, who freed the infant from the womb" (https://birthpsychology.com/journal-issue/volume-9-issue-1 ). 
_The successor of this Godess in the modern Gr. Orthodox faith is *Saint Eleutherios*, protector of pregnacy and birth. You see the point!

_Ilith_- is again one of the forms of the v. έρχομαι (to come), clearly visible in perfect tenses.  Whether the similarity between _freedom_ and _coming_ in Gr. in the childbirth context is accidental or not, is a matter of debate. 
For  a step farther: It is said that laos is etymologically related to _las_ (stone, Lat. _lapis_). This is explained in the myth of Deucalion where the people were created from stones. You may notice the relation of Gr. _lithos_ (stone) to _leudh_.


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## berndf

CapnPrep said:


> In other words, many authors believe that the "free" sense existed before the "child" sense.


If you doubt that _liber _and _Leute, люди_, etc. are cognate, then your argumentation makes sense and the explanation you cited is indeed the more obvious one. If you don't, it doesn't. Therefore by citing _liber_ as a cognate, Pokorkny does "stick out his neck" in this matter.


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## englishman

berndf said:


> Well, the concept of a Roman "familia" (="household") consisting of the "pater familias", his next of kin, the "filii" or "liberi" ("children") as well as the slaves is really O-level history stuff which can be found in any text book on Roman history and is not at all speculative.


OK, I suspect that I misunderstood what you were suggesting about the "free" meaning: that it was a sense that existed generally in IE languages. If the meaning arose from a particular family arrangement common in Roman society,  I guess it's restricted to the Romance languages and those with borrowings from them, and is specifically not in the Slavic languages ?

[And on an unrelated note: we don't have "O levels" in the UK anymore; the equivalent exams are now called GCSEs]


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## berndf

englishman said:


> OK, I suspect that I misunderstood what you were suggesting about the "free" meaning: that it was a sense that existed generally in IE languages. If the meaning arose from a particular family arrangement common in Roman society,  I guess it's restricted to the Romance languages and those with borrowings from them, and is specifically not in the Slavic languages ?


My explanation was specific to Latin (and derived words in other Languages) and under the assumption that _liber_ is cognate to _Leute _and_ люди_ as Pokorny suggests.


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## CapnPrep

berndf said:


> If you doubt that _liber _and _Leute, люди_, etc. are cognate, then your argumentation makes sense and the explanation you cited is indeed the more obvious one. If you don't, it doesn't. Therefore by citing _liber_ as a cognate, Pokorkny does "stick out his neck" in this matter.


 I still have trouble following your reasoning. I am willing to accept that _Leute_ "people", ἐλεύθερος "free", and _liberi_ "children" are all reflexes of *_leudh_, whose basic sense is "grow". This is basically what Pokorny says, and nothing more.

The first part of your hypothesis — correct me if I've misunderstood you — is that "grow" came to mean "grow within the same group", giving rise to the "people" and "child" senses. This seems reasonable to me, but there is a lack of evidence for the "child" sense outside of Latin. (Pokorny cites a Gothic form meaning "Jüngling", but it is a compound noun and the *_leudh_ part only has the general meaning "Gestalt").

The second part of your hypothesis is that "free" is a specifically Roman/Latin development from "child". But the "free" sense exists outside of Latin, suggesting that it is an earlier development. Pokorny specifically mentions the suffixed form *_leudhero-_ "zum Volk gehörig, frei".



englishman said:


> If the meaning arose from a particular family arrangement common in Roman society,  I guess it's restricted to the Romance languages and those with borrowings from them, and is specifically not in the Slavic languages ?


It's restricted to Latin, apparently (nothing attested in later Romance, according to ML). I don't know of any borrowings.


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## Scholiast

Good morning, all.



> I still have trouble following your reasoning. I am willing to accept that _Leute_ "people", ἐλεύθερος "free", and _liberi_ "children" are all reflexes of *_leudh_, whose basic sense is "grow". This is basically what Pokorny says, and nothing more.



No disrespect to anyone whatever, but I remain highly dubious about the putative link between _Leute_/люди/λάος and Lat. _liberi_ = "children": as CapnPrep says in this latest post (#28), this is a uniquely Roman, or rather, Latin, phenomenon, for which (#18) there is a straightforward socio-historical explanation which obviates the need for philological speculation.

That is not, however, to deny that a postulated connexion between έλευθ- and _liber_- in the sense of "free" has merit.


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## berndf

CapnPrep said:


> The second part of your hypothesis is that "free" is a specifically Roman/Latin development from "child". But the "free" sense exists outside of Latin, suggesting that it is an earlier development. Pokorny specifically mentions the suffixed form *_leudhero-_ "zum Volk gehörig, frei".


So, what you are saying is that you agree with me that the meaning _free_ is derived from _grown within the same group__. _But you think that this be an earlier development, probably because in most slave-holding societies salves are captured enemies or other foreigners and their decedents. And you think that in Latin the meaning _free _for _liber_ was already completely dominant and the meaning _child_ is a subsequent derivation from the meaning _liber=free_. Is that your position?


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## CapnPrep

berndf said:


> And you think that in Latin the meaning _free _for _liber_ was already completely dominant and the meaning _child_ is a subsequent derivation from the meaning _liber=free_. Is that your position?


This part, yes, following E&M cited above and other authors.



			
				berndf said:
			
		

> So, what you are saying is that you agree with me that the meaning _free_ is derived from _grown within the same group__. _But  you think that this be an earlier development, probably because in most  slave-holding societies salves are captured enemies or other foreigners  and their decedents.


This part, no. I said that the notion of "grow within the same group" can reasonably give rise to the senses "people" and "child", although evidence is lacking for "child". I don't know how the sense "free" arose, but it must be pre-Latin. Maybe it had something to do with slaves, etc., but I never suggested anything like that myself.


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## englishman

CapnPrep said:


> It's restricted to Latin, apparently (nothing attested in later Romance, according to ML). I don't know of any borrowings.



Isn't "liberal" in English and German a borrowing from French (or OFr) ?


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## CapnPrep

englishman said:


> Isn't "liberal" in English and German a borrowing from French (or OFr) ?


I was referring to _liberi_ "children", but the "free" sense of _liber_ didn't survive much in Romance either (in inherited vocabulary). _Liberal_ in English and German is a borrowing from Latin (possibly via French, but it's a borrowing from Latin in French, too).


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## berndf

CapnPrep said:


> ...although evidence is lacking for "child".


Not entirely. You have "Nachwuchs" ("offspring") as meaning of "liut" (click) in OHG (I believe Pokorny mentions this too, can't check, the server is down).


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## Dan2

CapnPrep said:


> I was referring to _liberi_ "children", but the "free" sense of _liber_ didn't survive much in Romance either (in inherited vocabulary).


I'm most likely just misinterpreting something in this sentence, but maybe others are confused too.  The basic word for "free" in It/Fr/Sp/Port is libero/libre/libre/livre; is that not inherited vocabulary?


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## berndf

Dan2 said:


> I'm most likely just misinterpreting something in this sentence, but maybe others are confused too.  The basic word for "free" in It/Fr/Sp/Port is libero/libre/libre/livre; is that not inherited vocabulary?


Apparently not. The dictionnaire de l'académie française lists _liure/libre_ as 12th century loan from Latin.


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## Dan2

So did _each_ of those languages (It/Fr/Sp/Port), plus, for ex., Romanian, _borrow _it from Latin? And how did they express the general concept before the borrowing?


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## CapnPrep

Dan2 said:


> So did _each_ of those languages (It/Fr/Sp/Port), plus, for ex., Romanian, _borrow _it from Latin? And how did they express the general concept before the borrowing?


"Borrowing" is kind of a vague term; it doesn't necessarily mean that the word didn't exist in the early period of the language. What it means is that the word did not undergo all of the regular phonetic changes that applied to fully assimilated, inherited vocabulary, and instead remained closer to the original Latin form.

French _li__béral_, for example, is obviously a direct loan from Latin _līberālis_, with minimal phonetic evolution. It is a learned word, absent from everyday conversation in the relevant periods and thus untouched by sound changes driven by popular usage.
_
Livrer_, on the other hand, is an inherited word. If you start with Latin _līberāre_ and apply all the regular sound changes, you get _livrer_.

So it turns out that _libre_ (< _līberum_) is somewhere in between. Such words are sometimes called "semi-learned" because some sound changes applied (e.g. loss of post-tonic and final vowels), but not others (e.g. lenition _b _> _v_), because for whatever reason the association with the original Latin form remained strong. I imagine that _libre_ has been in continuous use in day-to-day conversation since the Latin period, but its phonetic evolution was checked, perhaps because of its status as a legal term, or because people felt the need to prevent homophony with _livre_ "book" and _livre _"pound". Just speculating here… 

I don't know if the same conclusions can be drawn for all of the other Romance languages. Catalan _lliure_ looks pretty regular to me, for example, but Meyer-Lübke (5012) only mentions Sardinian as having inherited forms of _līber_.


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## Outsider

What is more, while there are cognates of _liber_ in the Romance languages, I am not aware of any that mean "child".


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## Scholiast

Good afternoon, everyone



> "Borrowing" is kind of a vague term; it doesn't necessarily mean  that the word didn't exist in the early period of the language. What it  means is that the word did not undergo all of the regular phonetic  changes that applied to fully assimilated, inherited vocabulary, and  instead remained closer to the original Latin form.



Sorry, but this is not quite right.

"Borrowings" must be distinguished from "Derivations". Fr. _livre_, Ital. _libro_, (for example) from Latin _liber_ = "book" are drectlyi _derived_. Modern English "jodhpurs", "intelligentsia", "delicatessen" and "haka" are in contrast _Lehnworter_ ("borrowed" from, respectively, Hindi, Russian, German and a Maori tongue of which I know little).

The _derivation_ of Russian интеллигенция, for example, is entirely clear, from Latin _intellegere_, which other English words ("intellect", "intellectual", "intelligence") share. But in its modern, differentiated, sense, it is a loan-word.

The same can be said for _Delikat-essen_: both owe part of the stem to Latin (_delic_-, as in "delicious", "delectable") but the rest to a Germanic word, _essen_ (related to, but not derived from, Latin, _edo_, _esse_, "eat"). The compound, _Delicatessen_ ("Delikat-essen"). Hence this is a loan-word - a "borrowing".

Best to all,

Scholiast


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## Dan2

Scholiast said:


> The same can be said for _Delikat-essen_: both owe part of the stem to Latin (_delic_-, as in "delicious", "delectable") but the rest to a Germanic word, _essen_ (related to, but not derived from, Latin, _edo_, _esse_, "eat"). The compound, _Delicatessen_ ("Delikat-essen").


I like this derivation .  But other sources say the word is from French "délicatesse".


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## Scholiast

Good afternoon

Without prejudice to anything said before in this thread, www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=delicatessen&searchmode=none

may be right: but it changes nothing. It is still a loan-word, that is, a borrowing, not a derivative.


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## CapnPrep

Scholiast said:


> "Borrowings" must be distinguished from "Derivations". Fr. _livre_, Ital. _libro_, (for example) from Latin _liber_ = "book" are drectlyi _derived_.


I would avoid the term "derivation" because this has a different, morphological sense. As far as I can tell, you are using it to mean the same thing as what I called "inherited" vocabulary (other commonly used terms are "native" or "popular" words). And my point was that there is not a clear division between borrowings and native words, particularly in the case of Latin/Romance. For example, _livre_ "book" in French is not "drectlyi _derived_" from Latin _lĭber_. The stressed short vowel _ĭ _should normally have become _e_ _> ei_ in Old French, giving modern French _loivre_ (cf. _pĭper_ > _poivre_). The fact that the vowel remained _i_ shows that _livre_ is semi-learned (i.e. neither fully native nor fully borrowed).


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## berndf

Scholiast said:


> The same can be said for _Delikat-essen_: both owe part of the stem to Latin (_delic_-, as in "delicious", "delectable") but the rest to a Germanic word, _essen_ (related to, but not derived from, Latin, _edo_, _esse_, "eat"). The compound, _Delicatessen_ ("Delikat-essen"). Hence this is a loan-word - a "borrowing".


There is no chance of analysing _Delikatessen _as _Delikat-Essen_. The latter would be pronounced /de.li'ka:tˌʔɛ.sn/ whereas _Delikatessen_ is pronounced /de.li.kaˈtɛ.sn/. Very different.


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## Walshie79

Scholiast said:


> All good wishes again
> 
> 
> 
> "Speculation" does not necessarily mean "blind guesswork", It may also mean "rational conjecture", which is after all the stuff and being of Comparative Philology anyway.
> 
> And I still conjecture, I hope rationally, that "lad" / "Leute" / "людн" are connected.



As for surviving English cognates, I'm not convinced by "lad"- but what about the colloquial 2nd person plural "you lot"? It's remarkably similar to Dutch "jullie", which I believe derives from a cognate of "you" combined with one of "Leute". I know it would require devoicing of the final [d], but that's disappeared altogether from the Dutch version. And in everyday combinations like this words can be disguised (eg _Hello_> _Hale be thou_).


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## OBrasilo

CapnPrep said:


> I would avoid the term "derivation" because this has a different, morphological sense. As far as I can tell, you are using it to mean the same thing as what I called "inherited" vocabulary (other commonly used terms are "native" or "popular" words). And my point was that there is not a clear division between borrowings and native words, particularly in the case of Latin/Romance. For example, _livre_ "book" in French is not "drectlyi _derived_" from Latin _lĭber_. The stressed short vowel _ĭ _should normally have become _e_ _> ei_ in Old French, giving modern French _loivre_ (cf. _pĭper_ > _poivre_). The fact that the vowel remained _i_ shows that _livre_ is semi-learned (i.e. neither fully native nor fully borrowed).


_Liber_ as in free, was _līber_, with long i. Hence, the evolution to French _i_ should be right then. _Liber_ as in book however, had a short _i_ but it's an unrelated world, cognate with Old Church Slavonic _lubŭ_ (and Slovenian _lubje_), meaning tree bark. I think _līber_ -> _livre_ (free) is a direct derivation.


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## CapnPrep

OBrasilo said:


> I think _līber_ -> _livre_ (free) is a direct derivation.


Except that "free" is _li*b*re_ in French, not _livre_.  You are right about the vowel, but the preservation of the * is learned (compare with livrer < līberare, as I mentioned already above). But I'm sure you can find livre/liure in older texts, and that would indeed show the expected popular form.*


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## fdb

The CNRTL has only one attestation for "liure" in the sense "free", from ca. 1200.

http://www.cnrtl.fr/etymologie/libre


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