The Germanic substrate - knives?

[milan.rezac at utoronto.ca]

The vowels are a problem.  I think OCS shows the hard yer for _okuno_;
the Finnish borrowing is _akkuna_ < *_okuno_ (dial., for std. _ikkuna_).
So PSlv. *okuno.  That makes a lot of sense as a derivative of IE. *okw-,
*okw-no- > *okuno-:  cp. Greek op-, omma < *okw-mnt- 'eye', Lat. oculus,
etc.  A connection with Russ. _kinut'_ is improbable because of the
vowels:  _kinut'_ < kynOti (O=syllabic nasal), best connected with kyv-
(something like 'move in a swinging fashion'), sc. *kyv-nO- > kynO-.

Interestingly, the Gothic word for window is auga-dauro 'eye-door',
English window < Old Norse vind-auga 'wind-eye'.

On Wed, 15 Nov 2000, Kastytis Beitas wrote:

> But I have one fresh crazy idea, based on this *kn-  thing.  :-)
> There is Russian word okno 'window; opening, orifice, hole'. Usually it is
> explained as derivative from Slavonic oko 'eye'. But there is other
> possibility.

> There are some Russian words with initial o-, where this o is a prefix. For
> example:

....

> Idea is that Russian okno 'window' is actually o-kno, where kn- means
> something (hole, opening etc) that is cut by knife or punched by some sharp
> or similar implement... And this kn- in okno is maybe the lonely last relic
> in Russian... His nearest relative may be is Russian verb kinut'  'to cast,
> throw'. Other group of related words are words with gn- (Russian gniot etc)
> and gin- ...

>                          Kastytis Beitas