The Germanic substrate - knives?

[Kastytis Beitas]

At 12:42 10.11.2000 -0500, Rick Mc Callister wrote:

>         Initial /*gwh-/ would have yielded Germanic /b, g/ --IF followed by
>a vowel. Someone more knowledgeable will have to fill us in on what
>/*ghwn-V-/ would have produced.
>         <...>
>         Again, I don't know what *Kn- would yield in Greek & Lithuanian

Lithuanian:
knaibyti, knebenti, knyburiuoti 'to peck, pick'
knapteleti 'to nod suddenly (usually about sleepy person)'
knez:inti 'to break/smash to pieces'
kniede 'rivet'
knieteti 'to itch, tickle'
kniubti 'to kneel/fall with one's face downwards'
knotis 'to come off (tear off ) (spontaneously) [about bark]'

But there are no words with meaning 'knife'.

But I have one fresh crazy idea, based on this *kn-  thing.  :-)
There is Russian word okno 'window; opening, orifice, hole'. Usually it is
explained as derivative from Slavonic oko 'eye'. But there is other
possibility.

There are some Russian words with initial o-, where this o is a prefix. For
example:

Russian okorok 'ham' is explained as derivative from Old Slavonic *kork-,
where krak in many Slavonic languages means 'leg, thigh, hip'.

Russian ovrag 'ravine' is derived from Old Russian form vrag. /These
examples are from Chernykh's 'Historical etymological dictionary of modern
Russian language' (1999)/

It is possible to find other similar examples too.

Idea is that Russian okno 'window' is actually o-kno, where kn- means
something (hole, opening etc) that is cut by knife or punched by some sharp
or similar implement... And this kn- in okno is maybe the lonely last relic
in Russian... His nearest relative may be is Russian verb kinut'  'to cast,
throw'. Other group of related words are words with gn- (Russian gniot etc)
and gin- ...

                         Kastytis Beitas

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Kastytis Beitas
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Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics
Faculty of Natural Sciences
Vilnius University
Ciurlionio 21
Vilnius 2009, Lithuania
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Fax:     (370 2)235409
E-Mail:  kastytis.beitas at gf.vu.lt
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