Roots ending in "X" ("hard H") tend towards disgust?

[Wayles Browne]

>Greetings SEELANGers!
>
>Just the other day, I received Gribble's Russian Root List
>(Thanks George!), and after a cursory glance at the roots,
>a thought came to mind:
>
>It seems that many of the roots ending in X ('Kh', the almost
>coughing-like sound) seem to indicate things that are of
>disgust.... unpleasant things, distasteful things, things that
>are quite yucky for a decent person to even to think about...
>
>Does this appear to be the case?
>

Dear Mr. Udut,
I'm not convinced. Rather than go through the Root List, I got
out Zaliznjak's Grammaticheskij slovar' russkogo jazyka, in
which words are arranged by their final letters, and turned to
pages 572-574, where all the words are that end in X.
These include such neutral items as max 'swinging motion etc.',
lemex 'plowshare', orex 'walnut', gorox 'green peas', kozhux
'sheepskin jacket', mex 'fur'; pax- words can be about good smells as
well as bad ones. There are also such definitely respectable
words as verx 'summit', smex 'laughter' and dux 'spirit' (as
in Svjatoj Dux).
Then, of course, there are words taken into Russian from Greek
and other languages, many with positive meanings, such as
monarx, monax 'monk', patriarx, shax '1) shah, 2) chess' and
al'manax 'almanac'.
What do the rest of our readers think?


Wayles Browne, Assoc. Prof. of Linguistics
Department of Linguistics
Morrill Hall 321, Cornell University
Ithaca, New York 14853, U.S.A.

tel. 607-255-0712 (o), 607-273-3009 (h)
fax 607-255-2044 (write FOR W. BROWNE)
e-mail ewb2 at cornell.edu

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