solemai etymology?

[Sally Thomason]

   That word for cranberry (which Terry Kaufman phonemicizes
as sulmi) is surely at least partly from a Salishan language,
because it has a Salishan suffix -m(i)xw (where xw is a labialized
velar fricative) `berry'.  Shaw 1909 says the word is "not
strictly CJ, or only local" [that might not be *quite* a
direct quote, but it's close] -- a common designation, I've
noticed, for Salishan-origin words in Shaw's dictionary.
The word also begins in s-, the pan-Salishan nominalizing
and/or stative aspect prefix.  [I should add that it's not
very surprising that the -xw of the suffix doesn't show up
on most of the examples of this word -- Harrington's example,
roughly sulmix, is the sole exception -- because the fricative
is quite lax (at least in Montana Salish) and often hard to
hear at the end of a word.]

   But I haven't been able to find a source for the whole
word in any of the Salishan dictionaries available to me
-- most notably, perhaps, Kinkade's Upper Chehalis
dictionary (since a number of Chinook Jargon words have
been sourced to Chehalis), but also my own Montana Salish 
(Flathead) dictionary files, Carlson & Flett's Spokane 
dictionary, Mattina's Colville-Okanagan dictionary,
Kinkade's Cowlitz dictionary, the Thompson's Thompson
[sic] dictionary, Bates, Hess, & Hilbert's Lushootseed
dictionary, and Kinkade's Moses-Columbia dictionary.
I also don't find the word in Kuipers' Salish Etymological
Dictionary.

   Aside from Harrington and Shaw, other sources that I've 
found that have this word are Lewis & Clark (Nov. 13, 1805, 
AND Jan. 25, 1806) sol-me `wild cranberry'; Le Jeune 1924
solemai; and Swan 1857 soilme `cranberries'.  The Lewis &
Clark entry, of course, might well not be Chinook Jargon
at all, but a local word from a Native language.

   -- Sally

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