"lanechtskipt" =? "landish-ship"

[Joel S. Berson]

Playing along (although I'm skeptical, to say the least), would an
animal that is thought of as "-ish", "somewhat like, having the
nature of" be named with a word containing "echt", "true, genuine"?

Joel

At 11/11/2013 07:11 PM, W Brewer wrote:
>Playing with the idea of 'camel' & working backwards: assume a calque of
>the original Arabic <ship of the desert> or <desert ship>. Then,
><<lanecht>> would have to correspond to 'desert'. This is the tough part.
>Assume some cognate of English <land> (we think of as basically arable,
>however). Germanic & Celtic cognates imply a "free space" including 'heath,
>plain'. Free of trees, like a <lawn> (etymologically identical to French
><lande> 'wasteland' < Celtic 'heath, plain'). <<Lanecht>> could correspond
>by this reasoning to English *land-ish (an outlandish idea, actually).
>Whence "the landish-ship", meaning the camel as metaphorized as "the ship
>of the wasteland". Wonder if the Arabs view their homeland as a wasteland?
>
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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org