Taboo replacements

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

In a message dated 4/8/99 9:07:20 PM Mountain Daylight Time,
nicholas.widdows at traceplc.co.uk writes:

>What would constitute evidence for this, and for "brown" or "honey-eater"
>over the ursa/arktos/rakshasa root, being a taboo replacement, as opposed to
>a common-or-garden lexical innovation?

Exactly.  After all, there was no taboo making the Romance languages shift
their work for "horse" from the Latin derivative of *ekwos to "caballus".

Aparently it was simply a shift, as if we'd stopped using "horse" and
substituted "nag" or "glue-bait" or "cayuse".