Further Thoughts On "Goth-"

[David L. White]

        The word is sometimes connected with a word meaning 'flood' or
something of that sort (sometimes given as 'pour').  It occurs to me that
from an original /gout/ (ancestral to Germanic /gaut/), /gut/ might be a
zero-grade, such as would (since this is a strong verb) occur in past
participles (like "flooded").   A zero-grade version is, by the way,
generally taken to be the ancestor of modern English "gut", though the
semantics are unclear (to me).  The full o-grade might have meant "flood",
so that the two variants might go back to a difference of opinion as to
whether the Goths were being called in effect "the flood people" or "the
flooded people".   As for why they would be called anything of the sort, I
vaguely recall that sea-levels in the general vicinity were rising at about
the time in question.  But all this is rather speculative, and I stand ready
to be set straight.

Dr. David L. White