Latin perfects and Fluent Etruscan in 30 days!

[Larry Trask]

On Fri, 18 Jun 1999, Eduard Selleslagh wrote:

> Maybe it has something to do with left-handed people being called
> 'southpaws', as all Americans are supposed to be looking west ;-).

As far as I know -- and the OED supports me here -- the word `southpaw'
derives from the American game of baseball.  A baseball diamond is
traditionally laid out so that the afternoon sun shines into the eyes of
the fielders, and not of the batter.  This means that the fielders,
including the pitcher, face west, and so the south is on their left.
The word `southpaw' thus came to be applied to a left-handed pitcher,
and was later extended to left-handers in general.

The word `southpaw' is recorded only from the 19th century, while `paw'
for `hand' is recorded as early as 1605.

> Remember, left is 'sinister', so much that in Castilian they
> considered 'siniestro' a taboo word and replaced it by a Basque loan
> word (ezkerra > izquierda).

Yes, though there is a phonological problem here, since Basque <ezker>
`left', definite form <ezkerra>, should not have yielded Castilian
<izquierdo> (m.), <izquierda> (f.).  Since there is evidence that Basque
once had a word-forming suffix *<-do>, meaning something like `bad
thing', it is possible that an unrecorded Basque derivative *<ezkerdo>
was borrowed into Castilian before being lost from Basque itself.
Nobody knows.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk