[Lexicog] bat

Thu Sep 15 14:33:25 UTC 2005

>From the languages that didn't appear in email on 'bat':

Latin     vespertilio  which obviously derived from vesper (evening)

Polish   nietoperz  (this is obviously a negative formation, since prefix nie- is a negative particle,
but I do not know what is the meaning of the rest (maybe someone of Polish background can explain this)

Italian    maglio  (metaphoric meanining derived from mallet, head of sledgehammer); also mazza (sledge-hammer); mazzeranga (beetle, rammer) and finally pipistrello (from pipita - pip in fowls, piece of loose skin)

Arabic   in addition to waTwaaT which I already mentioned in one of the earlier emails,
miDrab (from the root D-r-b - to beat, to strike; cp. Italian etymologies); miijaar (from wajr or wijaar cave, cavern, grotto, i. e. according to the place of habitation)

I can tell that the word 'bat' gives a lot of ideas for the ways how meanings derived. 

Hayim Y. Sheynin
Gratz College

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From: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com [mailto:lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Simon Wickham-Smith
Sent: Thursday, September 15, 2005 7:20 AM
To: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Lexicog] bat

hi - so I looked up the Tibetan word for bat.  I found pha wang, which didn't really help very much until it dawned on me that it might be an alternative or dialectical pronunciation of 'phur wa, ie a flying fox.  I haven't come across any mythology which could help in this etymological search, maybe someone out there can help.  I would definitely connect pha with 'phur, which would emphasise the flying thing.

In Mongolian it's sarisan bagvaaxai, in which saris means a membrane or else leather (here in the appositive genitive) and bagvaaxai is another word for a simple commonorgarden bat.  I can't work out the etymology of bagvaaxai (any takers?) but interestingly the word for a dandelion is bagvaaxai tsetseg, a bat-flower.  (Note that these terms are grammatically different:  the leathery bat is noun+gen+noun, but the dandelion is noun+noun.)

I also found a Uyghur dictionary and scanned that.  There are three words (or more likely three spelling variants) - şäpäräk, şäpiräñ and şipäräk.  Şäpä means a sound, signal or indication, which clearly has something to do with the bat's tweepytweep signalling.  On the other hand, şäpiräk means emaciated or lean...don't quite get that.  I have no idea whether this is of any use, but the ending -räk (or -raq in fronted vowel words) is a comparative marker for adjectives.  

What's the Turkish word?

Interesting that the Hungarian bat is a leather(y) mouse.  A bit like an effless Fledermaus, perhaps?

What about the adjective batty?  I suspect that there is no connection between the Jamaican argot use for queer (which reminds me of the quasi-euphemistic phrase "batting for the other side", clearly pejorative and clearly from the playing fields of English public schools, where I tell you from experience that battiness is not uncommon;  but also there's a left-hander I think too, another historically pejorative phrase, meaning a queer man) and the British meaning of crazy (a Fledermaus short of an f perhaps?).  Maybe it's because they do things the "wrong" way round - hanging upside down and sleeping during the day...?

Si
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