dus is from Proto-Indo-European *dus- "bad, evil" (as in dyslexia from Greek δυσ- "bad"). *dus- is a derivative of *deu- "lack, be wanting", which perhaps became Greek δεύτερος "second", and δευτερονόμιον "second or repeated law" (νόμος "law") and Deuteronomy.
gam "to go or pass" is from *gʷeh₂- as in juggernaut, come, event.
10 comments:
Interesting. Is the Persian (Turkish, Urdu/Hindi, Romanian...) dušman = "enemy" derived from *dus- as well?
I think so. The idioms at the bottom of the Lubotsky page I linked to mention "NP du«man `enemy';" - I assume this is badly encoded "dušman". Also see:
http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/getobject.pl?c.4:1:589.platts
I've given you my best answer on my blog. I hope it might help.
So what's with all of the etymology? Is this what you teach?
Dude, it's an etymology blog! That's what we do here!
Thanks :)
Feh, the Lebotsky pages won't open. Stupid proxy...
Well, I'm sorry. I had thought it was, but I wasn't totally positive. Thanks for the insight.
Erh, wouldn't it be more appropriate/direct to say that gam- comes from *gʷem- (as in English come)?
If you like, but I thought it was usually cited as *gʷeh₂- or *gʷā-. But I see what you mean.
PIE *gʷeh₂- and *gʷem- are recognized to be etymologically related but if I'm not mistaken the reasons for why *m and *h₂ alternate here are still a matter of debate. My idea is that there was an ancient pre-Syncope root *gʷeu with extended forms *gʷau-éx-a and *gʷau-ém-a. After Syncope, we are reduced with *gʷ(w)ex- and *gʷ(w)em- but *w following a labialized phoneme is naturally impossible to maintain, leading to erosion of *w. Of course, there's no way to prove that. Sigh.
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