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  • Cadaver < lat. cadere?

    From Christian Weisgerber@21:1/5 to All on Sat May 17 19:22:17 2025
    Etymological dictionaries agree that the widely borrowed Latin
    "cadaver" derives from "cadere" 'to fall', but they gloss over the
    details. Where's the -v- from? I can't tell if this is simply
    obvious--if you actually know Latin, which I don't--or genuinely
    unknown.

    Many perfect stems have -v-, but cadere has a reduplicating perfect,
    cecidi. Also, the perfect -v- doesn't appear in participle stems,
    I think, which would be the most likely source to derive a noun
    from.

    So how _is_ cadaver formed from cadere?

    --
    Christian "naddy" Weisgerber [email protected]

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  • From HenHanna@21:1/5 to Christian Weisgerber on Sat May 17 22:37:49 2025
    XPost: alt.usage.english, alt.language.latin

    On Sat, 17 May 2025 19:22:17 +0000, Christian Weisgerber wrote:

    Etymological dictionaries agree that the widely borrowed Latin
    "cadaver" derives from "cadere" 'to fall', but they gloss over the
    details. Where's the -v- from? I can't tell if this is simply
    obvious--if you actually know Latin, which I don't--or genuinely
    unknown.

    Many perfect stems have -v-, but cadere has a reduplicating perfect,
    cecidi. Also, the perfect -v- doesn't appear in participle stems,
    I think, which would be the most likely source to derive a noun
    from.

    So how _is_ cadaver formed from cadere?


    _________________


    One theory is that the -v- comes from analogy with other
    Latin nouns ending in -ver or -vus (e.g., palaver, pulver from pulvis
    "dust"). Latin sometimes inserts a -v- as a connective or euphonic
    element.



    Word (Root Suffix) Meaning

    pulvis (pul- -vis) dust
    suavis (su- -avis) sweet
    clavis (cla- -vis) key
    cadaver (cad- -aver) corpse
    amavi (ama- -vi) I have loved
    vocavi (voca- -vi) I have called



    ________________________


    Reminds me of the question(s),

    where does N in Javanese come from?

    where does L in Congolese come from?

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  • From Ross Clark@21:1/5 to Christian Weisgerber on Sun May 18 11:37:36 2025
    On 18/05/2025 7:22 a.m., Christian Weisgerber wrote:
    Etymological dictionaries agree that the widely borrowed Latin
    "cadaver" derives from "cadere" 'to fall', but they gloss over the
    details. Where's the -v- from? I can't tell if this is simply
    obvious--if you actually know Latin, which I don't--or genuinely
    unknown.

    Many perfect stems have -v-, but cadere has a reduplicating perfect,
    cecidi. Also, the perfect -v- doesn't appear in participle stems,
    I think, which would be the most likely source to derive a noun
    from.

    So how _is_ cadaver formed from cadere?


    So far as my resources can take me, nobody seems to know.
    The relation with cadere is taken as given in my Lat-Eng dictionary, but
    OED says "perhaps".

    But thank you for an excuse to get out my copy of Walde, Lateinisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch (1906) -- and pay tribute again to my old
    friend Gloria, who (with me in mind) rescued it from a skip (dumpster)
    outside the door of her neighbour, a recently deceased scholarly
    Anglican clergyman.

    Yes, well:

    cadāver, -eris "Leichnam": wohl P.P.A. "der Gefallene" zu cadābundus,
    cado (s.d.) (Vaniček 67, vgl. auch Schulze Qu.ep. 250 a 1). Bersus Gutt.
    170 abweichende Verbindung mit der in cadamitas (s. calamitas)
    vorliegenden Wz. von ai. kadanam "Vernichtung" u.s.w. ist
    unwahrscheinlich, da ein P.P.A.dazu nur "vernichtet habend" bedeuten
    würde und eine andere Auffassung des Suffixes aussteht.

    I thought of one other Latin noun in -āver, namely papāver 'poppy', but
    it doesn't help much:

    papāver, -eris 'Mohn': wohl ptc.pf.act. *papā-ṷes "aufgeblasen, aufgedunsen" (Bildung wie cadāver) zu Wz. *pap- "aufblasen" in pampinus, papula (Vaniček 154).

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  • From Ed Cryer@21:1/5 to All on Sun May 18 09:46:22 2025
    XPost: alt.usage.english, alt.language.latin

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  • From Stefan Ram@21:1/5 to Ross Clark on Sun May 18 08:30:10 2025
    Ross Clark <[email protected]> wrote or quoted:
    papāver, -eris 'Mohn': wohl ptc.pf.act. *papā-ṷes "aufgeblasen, >aufgedunsen" (Bildung wie cadāver) zu Wz. *pap- "aufblasen" in pampinus, >papula (Vaniček 154).

    A guy quoted William Mitchell Ramsay, "Studies in the Roman Province
    Galatia. VI.--Some Inscriptions of Colonia Caesarea Antiochea",
    Journal of Roman Studies 14 (1924): 172-205 at 183 n.1 on a web forum:

    |A poppy is carved on an altar of Hermes: the native name of
    |opium was papa; papaver (cp. cadaver) is of Anatolian origin.
    |Pappa meant father.

    . Ramsay did not mention any specific sources for an Anatolian
    origin there. But since that ending does not show up much in Latin,
    it might be a loanword. Sometimes folks link it to the Indo-European
    root "wer", but "wer" is really just a root, not a suffix.

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  • From Stefan Ram@21:1/5 to Stefan Ram on Sun May 18 08:54:07 2025
    [email protected] (Stefan Ram) wrote or quoted:
    it might be a loanword. Sometimes folks link it to the Indo-European
    root "wer", but "wer" is really just a root, not a suffix.

    Yeah, sometimes a root can wind up as a suffix. Both cadavers and
    poppies can let out some fluid, and there is an Indo-European root
    "wē-r-" that means "liquid". (Just my own thought.) However, in Latin,
    fluid from a poppy was actually called "latex".

    purge fluid, putrefactive fluids, decomposition fluids

    latex, poppy latex

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  • From Stefan Ram@21:1/5 to Stefan Ram on Sun May 18 10:59:51 2025
    [email protected] (Stefan Ram) wrote or quoted:
    [email protected] (Stefan Ram) wrote or quoted:
    it might be a loanword. Sometimes folks link it to the Indo-European
    root "wer", but "wer" is really just a root, not a suffix.
    Yeah, sometimes a root can wind up as a suffix. Both cadavers and
    poppies can let out some fluid, and there is an Indo-European root
    "wē-r-" that means "liquid".

    cadaver, papaver, river, ... But no! The English word "river"
    comes from Middle English "rivere", from Anglo-Norman, from
    Vulgar Latin *"rīpāria", from Latin, feminine of "rīpārius",
    "of a bank", from "rīpa", "bank".

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  • From Christian Weisgerber@21:1/5 to Stefan Ram on Sun May 18 15:45:08 2025
    On 2025-05-18, Stefan Ram <[email protected]> wrote:

    cadaver, papaver, river, ... But no! The English word "river"
    comes from Middle English "rivere", from Anglo-Norman, from
    Vulgar Latin *"rīpāria", from Latin, feminine of "rīpārius",
    "of a bank", from "rīpa", "bank".

    A few kilometers south from here, the town of Altrip derives its
    name from Alta Ripa, 'high river bank', the designation of a Roman
    fort founded in 369.

    --
    Christian "naddy" Weisgerber [email protected]

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  • From Christian Weisgerber@21:1/5 to Ross Clark on Sun May 18 15:37:19 2025
    On 2025-05-17, Ross Clark <[email protected]> wrote:

    cadāver, -eris "Leichnam": wohl P.P.A. "der Gefallene" zu cadābundus,
    cado (s.d.) (Vaniček 67, vgl. auch Schulze Qu.ep. 250 a 1).

    papāver, -eris 'Mohn': wohl ptc.pf.act. *papā-ṷes "aufgeblasen, aufgedunsen" (Bildung wie cadāver) zu Wz. *pap- "aufblasen" in pampinus, papula (Vaniček 154).

    The "participle perfect active" is confusing, because Latin verbs
    don't have such a category. I guess it refers to an older formation
    that would only exist in relic forms in Latin. I see that a
    participle in *-wos- ~ *-us- is reconstructed for the PIE stative.

    I don't understand why such a formation wouldn't require a perfect
    stem.

    Here's what de Vaan's _Etymological Dictionary of Latin_ (2008)
    says. I missed that initially because cadaver doesn't have its
    own entry and is treated under cadō:

    The form of cadaver is difficult to explain. WH assume a ppa.
    *kadā-wes- ‘having fallen’, which is fine semantically; but where
    would ā come from, and why would the neuter form have been
    lexicalized?

    No entry for papāver.


    PS:
    The entry for cadō also mentions IE cognates Gr. κεκαδών ‘robbing’, ύπὸ ... κεκάδοντο ‘they receded’ [I may have butchered the diacritics]
    and further says:
    The appurtenance of Gr. pf. κεκαδ- is disputed: ‘to recede’ may
    have developed from ‘to fall back’, but this would probably imply
    that the active forms are secondary.

    Whatever. But "appurtenance"? That's not the right word, is it?
    I think we're looking for a derivative of "appertain", but English
    dictionaries seem rather mum there. Simply "pertinence"?

    --
    Christian "naddy" Weisgerber [email protected]

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