Как бедра бедром стала. Реконструкция праславянского названия бедра (на материале памятников XI–XIV вв.)
How ‘bedra’ Turned into ‘bedro’. Reconstruction of the Proto-Slavic Term for ‘Hip’ (Based on the Data of the 11th to 14th Century Texts)

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this article is to outline the morphology of the Proto-Slavic word for ‘hip’. The relevant stem *bedr- has been treated by etymologists as neuter and, thus, predominantly reconstructed as *bedro. Based on Old Church Slavonic as well as numerous other medieval Glagolitic and Cyrillic manuscripts of the 11th–14th c., it is demonstrated that the oldest attestations point clearly to the feminine gender being the original one. This interpretation is further corroborated by the earliest Old Czech data. Detailed morphological and accentological analyses allow determining the factors that induced independent, parallel gender shifts of feminine *bedra in later idioms. Incidentally, the results of this study can be useful for evaluating the lexeme’s etymologies.

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