LL-L "Etymology" 2007.09.23 (03) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L  -  24 September 2007 - Volume 03
Song Contest: lowlands-l.net/contest/ (- 31 Dec. 2007)
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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2007.09.23 (03) [E]

> From:  jonny <jonny.meibohm at arcor.de>
> Subject: LL-L 'Etymology'
>
> Beste Lowlanners,
>
> today I had for some reasons to climb into my neighbour's 'paddock',
> that fenced area to train horses. Yes- it's the same in German as in
> English, an old loan, I guess.
>
> On my way home then I came across Shakespeare's prologue of Macbeth,
> where one of the witches is called by (a ghost?) with name _Paddock_.
>
> I wonder where on earth there could be the relations between these two
> words?

Jonny,

At the end of the prologue the witches are calling to their familiars,
which are animals that a witch or wizard use as a roaming pair of eyes
and suchlike.

Thus, "Paddock" is a frog or toad, and "Graymalkin" is a grey cat.

"Puddock" or "puddy" is still a common word in Scots for a frog or toad.

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/

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From: Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2007.09.23 (05) [E]

 Dear All:

Subject: LL-L 'Etymology'
> Ron would know how the 'p's' crept in, but it's not an
> altogether unusual linguistic phenomenon, I think.

Correction! As you were!

I *should* have written: '...how the 'd's' crept in...'
It looks unsatisfactory in writing that a hard 'R' should be replaced by a
'D', but I know how easily one may become the other in the mouth. The
boffins of Rhodes University Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape report that the
English 'dialect' down that way shows a tendency to convert soft 'r' to 'd',
probably under the influence of Eastern Frontier Afrikaans hard 'R'..

> Please also consider Germanic schild pad
> ("shield/armored toad") and variants thereof
> for 'tortois' and 'turtle'

Ron, I like that, but how then do I fit this in with the Afrikaans 'skulp' =
'shell'? Skulpad makes such good sense, now, but what relation has our skulp
'shell' to our skild 'shield' if any?

> I have a hunch that Low Saxon Pogg and Pock
> for 'frog' is a contracted form of a cognate of
> English paddock 'frog'.

Ron, can't we agree that '-ock' is a suffix of diminunition or endearment?
Butt - buttocks
Bull - bullock
Hill - hillock
Bun - bannock

Just slightly off the track, as in Afrikaans:
(can) kan - kannetjie
(pill) pil - pilletjie
(man) man - mannetjie

I grant you the '-ic' OE suffix of approximation as in 'uglic wif' ME 'ugly
woman' (Grendel's mother in Beowulf). That '-ic' is now '-y' as in 'ugly'.
An aside: The Afrikaans for the same is 'aaklig', a word seldom applied to
women here...

> Another hunch of mine is that this -ock is
> related to Slavonic derivative * -ik ~ *-yk
> ~ *-ek ~ * -ak. We encounter it elsewhere
> in Germanic, such as in German chraneh
> Kranich 'crane' (the bird), cf. Low Saxon
*> *Kraan, Dutch kraan, English crane, etc.,
> but also Middle Saxon kranek and Old English
*> *cranoc. I believe it used to be something like
> an "approximant" ("...-like") and in some
> languages a diminutive marker as well, much
> like Turkic *-čä serving as both (e.g., kitab-čä
> 'book-let', tağ-čä 'mountain-like', on-čä "ten-like"
> = 'about ten', "Turk-like" = 'in Turkic/Turkish
> manner' > 'in Turkic/Turkish language' > 'Turkic/
> Turkish language'). So a pad-ock may have been
> a toad-like creature or a little toad, thus a frog.

> Consider also the Scottish home-made bread
> called bannock, cognate of Gaelic bannoch
> (< *bannoc?), Old English bannuc, cf. Latin
*> *panis 'bread' > panicium.

That's me, Ron, Shooting from the hip. I see you've said it all already, &
in greater detail...

Yrs,
Mark
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