cat < ?

[Rick Mc Callister]

Thanx for the impressive inventory of feline knowledge

Buck [1949: 181] suggests that
Greek aie/louros, ai/louros "cat, marten, ferret, weasel, etc." may be from
aio/los "quick" + oura/: "tail"

In my notes, Buck offers no etymology for Latin fe:le:s "cat, marten,
ferret", although Buck says to see Welsh beleu "marten"

Someone, maybe Partridge 1958, links feles to Latin meles "badger"

I suppose Hindi bhili "cat" would be too fortuitous to suggest a connection
based on *bhil-, *bhel-?

[snip]

>The earlier term for cats in Greek was <ailouros> or <aielouro>.  Herodotus
>describes them in Egypt in a way that seems to indicate that domestic cats
>were not very familiar to his readers.  Aristophanes mentions cats as part of
>a grabbag of wild game that is to be eaten.

	Yum!

><ailouros> might be some kind of a contraction, <Aiguptos?> + <ouros>,
>guardian.  Or a compound, <haili-> <ouros>, ship watcher.  (A study in the
>'70's showed that the spread of the currently dominant feral breed of
>domestic cat, the blotched tabby, can be traced back to European sea port
>towns.  Associating cats with ships might be the first impression -
>especially since they served the purpose of protecting grain cargoes against
>mice and rats.)  <ouros> is also a word in Greek refering to Egyptian desert
>country and the Libyan desert wildcat is very closely related to the European
>domestic cat.

	So is there a Greek Dick Whittington tale?

><ouros> also brings up the Lynx and <lungourion>, a kind of
>amber, the word derived by both Latins and Greeks "from lunx, ouron, and
>supposed to be the coagulated urine of the lynx."  Finally there is <ailinos>
>wailing, cry of anguish.  (Cf., Latin <feles>, cat; <fletus> weeping;
><flere>, to neigh as a horse does).
>
><feles>, the original Latin word for domestic cat, is often derived from
><felix>, referring either to the fecundity of cats or to the good effect they
>have on preserving growing things and grains against rodents and birds.

	From what I gather, feles was originally applied to a ferret,
mongoose or other type of weasel. I like your ailouros etymology a lot more
>
>Lidell-Scott give the first citation of <kattos> for cat as Aristophanes, but
>this is ambiguous and may be too early.  <kottos> appears in Greek as
>rooster, horse and two varieties of fish.  <chatos> may have been a rooster.
><gale:> refers in general to ferrets, martens, polecats and weasels.  The
>lynx <lunx> is the main wildcat in the Greek world, drawing the chariot of
>Bacchus and such.  In Latin, it is the ferret that gets the job of mouser by
>name, <mustêla> or <mustella>, indicating maybe that cats were not that
>common early on.

	Are there any known IE roots for these words?
>
>One possibility, though slightly distasteful to a cat appreciator like
>myself, is that the cat got its name from the use of its parts.
>
>Gr <kassuo:>, Att. <kattuo:>, to sew, to stitch together like a shoemaker.
><kattus>, a piece of leather (or animal skin.)  <katateino:>, stretch, draw
>tigth, especially a cord or strip of animal skin.  Perhaps this is somehow
>the source of "catgut", for which I haven't seen a decent explanation.
>(Attested is a Persian or Babylonian fur prepared from mouse skins,
><gaunacum> or <kaunakê>, so anything was possible.)

	My intuition is that cats would have been too valuable but in a
society that feasted on lark's tongues, anything's possible

[snip]

>Genetically, many domestic cat shows very close ties to the North African
>breed.

[snip]

So, if we could only find a Berber word of sufficient antiquity linked both
semantically and phonologically. But I suppose if one existed, it would
already be cited in OED

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701