hand (was: Re: indoeuropean)

[Anthony Appleyard]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Stefan Georg wrote:
> ...Other languages have replaced this apparently oldest word for "hand", to
> wit Latin manus, Gothic handus, Baltic and Slavic *renka/ronka (from a verb
> meaning "to grasp", cf. Lithuanian /rinkti/.  The limited distribution of
> this core-vocabulary item in IE has once given rise to the bromide that the
> early Indo-Europeans did >have feet but no hands (mocking at linguistic
> palaeontology, of course).

Compare the amount of modern English slang words for people's hands:
`grabs', `paws', `dooks', etc. Likely one relevant factor here is how
much a particular object or process is likely to accumulate slang names
for itself.