Author(s): Lembit Vaba / Language(s): Estonian
Issue: 69/2024
The article presents a new or refined etymological interpretation of the words kosur ’body bag > a bodyful of beating’, koslep ’body bag, skin bag’, luup(a) ʼmould-board plough’, lõust ʼ(ugly) face, look’ and pook ’the hem of a skirt, shirt or other garment’.kosur : kosur ’a bodyful of beating’ and its phonetic variants are mainly known in East and South Estonia, but there are scattered reports from elsewhere. The word is a borrowing from the Russian кожу́р ’sheepskin travelling cat’. Despite the semantic discrepancy, it has been erroneously associated with the homonymic Russian loan koser, kooser < vn кóзыpь ’trump’. This juxtaposition is contradicted by the repeatedly confirmed observation that in the case of loans denoting specific objects, etc., the loan carries an identical meaning or a meaning as close as possible to the subject of the loan.koslep : koslepi ʼbeating’ is a lexeme of colloquial Estonian which is not known in older Estonian lexicography. In dialects, the word is known all over Estonia. It is presumably a loanword from the Russian dialect кожелу́п ʼskiver, a person who takes the skin off a slaughtered animal; stalker, robber’ (< кóжа ʼskin’ + лупи́ть ʼto take the skin off; to beat’). The word kosmak : kosmagu ʼbeating’, recorded from Rõuge in Southern Estonia, is also a Russian loanword: < Russian dial. кожемя́к ʼtanner’ (< кóжа ʼskin’ + мя́ка́ть ʼ(to) bruise, squeeze, knead’). Having been borrowed into the Estonian language, these loans have undergone a metaphorical shift in meaning.luup(a): luuba ’mouldboard plough’ is known in the coastal and central parts of Harju, Järva and central Virumaa. The introduction of this type of plough marked an important turning point in farming, but it was not until the 1870s that Estonian peasants adopted it, when the villagers began to make a spinning wheel with a wooden spike > beam and an iron gib > mouldboard. The equivalents of the word are Votic loopi, loppi, etc. ’coulter, i.e. the part of the mould-board plough that turns away from the cut-up ploughshare’ and Finnish dial. (Kallivere in Estonian Inger) luopin ’the shovel-like appendage of the forked plough’. The Estonian-Votic-Finnish word in question is presumably a loan from the Russian dialectal substantive клопик ’plough that turns the ridge of soil to one side only’, which is etymologically related to the verb клепать ’to forge (cold iron), rivet, (hammer) surface’.lõust : lõusta ’an odd, deformed or distorted face, facial disfigurement, grimace; an unpleasant-looking person, the face of an animal’ was little known in the early decades of the 20th century. In Wiedemann’s dictionary, the word is erroneously recorded as a word from the Tartu and Võru dialects in Southern Estonia. Subsequent dialectal research has revealed that the word lõust is only slightly known in North Estonia. In etymological studies, lõust has been regarded as a descriptive word. I assume that lõust, with its North Estonian dialect background, is a lexicalised form of the lõu(se)d ’(swollen) neck glands’ of the plural inflection lõus, which has been adapted to st-final nouns. An analogue of the etymological relationship described is the English mumps pl ’inflammation of the salivary glands’ < mump ’facial disfigurement, grimace’. The external signs of the disease are often swelling of the neck, cheeks and chin, with a ’hamster face’.A possible phonetic variant of lõust is lõusk : lõusa, a hypothesis supported by examples in an Estonian dialect, where st ~ sk also occurs as an optional alternation at the end of a word. The linguist Manivalde Lubi has considered the word lõusk : lõusa ’animal or fish mouth’ to be an artificial word of his own creation.pook : pooga ~ poogi ’the hem of a skirt, shirt or other garment; belt’ is especially known on the West-Estonian islands, in Pärnumaa and Mulgi. Runic songs show that the word pook is much widely known. In the sense of a skirt and the hem of a woman’s shirt, the word has been consistently recorded in older Estonian lexicography since Göseken (1660). The word has a counterpart in the Votic language: pookka ~ puukka ’skirt ribbon, cantle; belt’. I presume that the Estonian-Votic *pōkka in question is a loan from a vocabulary that includes Old Icelandic bók ’embroidered bedclothes’, gullbóka ’embroider with gold thread’, Old Saxon bōkon ’embroider’ < Germanic *bōkō.
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