abarca/abarka/alpargata

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

Larry Trask <larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk> wrote:

>Anyway, the absence of early attestations of <abar> is curious, since
>the word is common enough today.  But I might note that a word
><harriabar> `hailstorm' is recorded in 1571.  Here the first element is
>clearly <harri> `stone', but what on earth is the force of <abar>?
>Suggestions on a postcard, please.

I'm all out of postcards, but I note that Azkue also gives a
variant <arri-adar> (BN-s, R) "pedrisco", and for <adar> "horn;
branch" also the glosses "borrasca" and "manga de agua".  Neither
harriabar nor arri-adar look like ancient formations, or else the
-i of <harri> would have been dropped.

So is this yet another etymologically unconnected word that has
become entangled with "horn/branch" <adar>/<abar>?  Or should we
perhaps compare with two cases (neither of them very clear) in IE
of association of "tree" and "horn" with stormy weather: Grk.
<keraunos> "thunderbolt", possibly connected with *k^er-Hw-
"horn", and Lith. <perku:nas> "thunder(bolt)", connected by
Gamqrelidze and Ivanov with *perkw- "oak"?

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl
Amsterdam