Celtic Influence

[Frank Rossi]

Rick Mc Callister wrote on 10 March 1999:

>I wonder about the mechanics of this one
>In Spanish a'lamo = "poplar"
>BUT olmo = "elm"

>>5)
>>Celtic survivals of northern and central Iberia:
>>Sp., Port.alamo `poplar', Cf. It. olmo

I think this is in reply to my posting on Celtic influence on Italian and
in particular on the North Italian dialects (it looks like my message, but
I'm not sure, because I never received a copy back of my message,as my
provider made some "enhancements" to the system over the weekend !!!).

My apologies to everyone. I misquoted my Spanish source ("Diccionario de
Uso del Espan~ol, Mari'a Moliner, Ed. Gredos, Madrid), which sometimes
gives etymologies and sometimes it doesn't.

The mistake arose as follows.
I looked up Spanish "olmo" (etymology given as Lat. "ulmus")
= Italian "olmo" (also from Lat. "ulmus") = English "elm"
I then looked up "a'lamo" and my eye fell on "Ulmus", but in fact this word
(with capital U !)  was part of the definition :(
"The name of various species of trees of the "Ulmus" genus of the
Salicaceae family..."),
the etymology was not given...

A (silly) mistake on my part and a good example of bad use of dictionaries!
Sorry, Rick and everyone else.