IE 'wolf'

[David L. White]

        With regard to the 'wolf' thing a while back, where it was stated
that Latin "lupus" is borrowed from a /p/-dialect of Italic, Germanic "wolf"
and so on appear to be the expected Germanic cognates of Latin, "vulpes".
If this is so, then unless I am missing something (a very real possibility),
the /-p/ here is original, as Germanic /kw/ does not (to my knowledge)
change into either /p/ before the shift or /f/ after it.  It is generally
recognized (I think) that Latin "lupus" and "vulpes" are tabu variants of
the same word.  That the original ordering was /wl/ rather than /lu/ is
suggested by Sanskrit "vrka-" and Lithuanian (if memory serves) "vlka-",
which almost have to be the same word as Greek "luko-".   So it would seem
then that both 1) the ordering of /l/ and /w-u/ and 2) the choice of /p/ or
/kw/ as the final C were subject to variation that is the result of tabu
deformation, not sound change.  Unless it can be shown that forms with /kw/
clearly did come down into Latin, or that /p/ in such positions was, like
/f/ in "bufo", not the regular development, there is, as far as I can see,
little reason to insist that the Latin forms were borrowed from /p/-Italic.
        I say all this with very little confidence:  correct me if I am
wrong.

Dr. David L. White