FW: cucumber, satan and eight.

[Rankin, Robert L]

> It's nice to hear from someone interested in Osage.  There are only a few
terms that I've identified as borrowings in Osage.  Monkapo 'coat, overcoat'
is one, obviously from French.  
 
Wow, I missed that one for sure!  I wonder if it's in Kaw also?
 
'Cucumber' and 'satan' are interesting cases that may involve loan blends.  Proto-Siouan clearly had a term for 'gourd, squash' with the shape *hko:-.  So kkokkomaN/kkokkomiN and similar terms in Siouan languages may have mixed their own reduplicated word and a French term.  
 
'Satan' in Quapaw has the fuller form of the stative verb/adjective, /ttaNka/ rather than the truncated /htaN/ as in Osage.  This means that EITHER the term doesn't come from English (or other European) 'satan' OR that Quapaws reinterpreted [taN] as /ttaNka/ 'great'.  One could argue either way.  I think I recorded two terms in Quapaw, /$attaNka/ and /$?attaNka/, with and without glottalization.  'Snake' is /wes?a/ and /$a/ is 'black, dark colored' in Quapaw, so the term could be interpreted as 'great snake' or 'the great dark one'.  I don't know if these terms go back to pre-contact times or only to post missionary times.
 
Osage /hkidhatopa/, Kansa /kkiadoba/, 'eight' at least has a folk interpretation in Siouan as 'two fours', where /to:pa/ is '4'.  My earlier speculation was that, as Anthony or Justin pointed out, it came from Wichita.  Working from memory (very dangerous for me nowadays), the Wichita word was something like /kiatawha/ or the like.  David can correct me on that.  Folk etymology does the rest.  
 
Bob