[gothic-l] *bleis, dauthubleis*

[thiudans]

As I am hand-correcting Bosworth-Toller for Sean Crist's project, 
I often imagine what the Go. form of a certain OE word might be, 
or if there's one that already exists. Translating an OE sentence I 
happened upon the word (ge)-bleoh, -bleo' "coloured". A search 
in Gerhard Koebler's GW finds the entry *-bleis, "coloured"; but 
the etymological information is lacking. He suggest possible 
connexion to Lw. Lat. -bilis. 

This seems a bit questionable in light of the possibility of being 
cognate with the abovementioned Gmc. (OE) form. Falk Fick 
Torp (286) has under the entry  *bli-1 scheinen (< PIE *bhle'[i,u]) 
*blîwa- "Farbe" citing A-S and Fris. examples with meanings 
colour or coloured. 

Thus we may postulate a Germ. *bli'wam "colour" and *bli'waz 
"coloured" Go. -bleis (from 1 Cor. 4,9 in Cod. Ambr. A, the Acc. Pl. 
form "dauthubljans" death-hued.) could have been an error for 
wa-stem adjective (composited form) or an example of a wa-
stem having gone over to ia-stem adjectives (i.e. long ja-stem, 
like wiltheis). Wright notes how in fact only "a very few adjectives 
of [the wa-class] are extant in Gothic". 

Admittedly, this has the minor problem of explaining how a 
single manuscript form "dauthubljans" could be a mistake for *
dauthubleiwans. Ignoring the possibility of taking "-bljans" as a 
shortened final composite form in the code "-coloured", I would 
suggest here that *bleiws (already perhaps too close to *blews 
'blue' or unfavorably finding itself in the paltry wa-class) had 
been reformed as *bleis after wiltheis etc.

Koebler refers to Holthausen, which I don't have access to at the 
moment. I wonder if there is connexion to a root form with 
meaning "pale", thus "death-pale" rather than "death-coloured", 
cf. NHG bleich. This however might require a velar suffix ?*-blei-
k-s.


Cheers,
Matthew








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