LINGUIST List 9.454

Tue Mar 24 1998

Disc: Apple-Word

Editor for this issue: Martin Jacobsen <martylinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. manaster, Re: 9.421, Sum: Apple-Word

Message 1: Re: 9.421, Sum: Apple-Word

If there is indeed a connection between IE 'apple' and some
Afro-Asiatic word for 'genitals', and even if the former comes from
the latter via borrowing (as Theo Vennemann proposes)--and I am not
prepared to grant either of these "if"s just yet--it would not have to
follow that the "genitals" meaning is the older. It could be that
that the "apple" meaning was the original one in AA, that the
borrowing from AA to IE took place at the time when this was so, and
that a meaning shift (euphemism) took place in AA since that time. IE
would then preserve the original meaning which has been lost long
since in the source language.

AMR