[Lexicog] mis = 'cat'

[Rudolph Troike]

Mike Maxwell wrote:

Incidentally, there's a word more or less like /mis/ in a large number
of Middle and South American Indian languages. The word means "cat",
but it is not cognate with the Spanish word for "cat" (which is 'gato').
Rather, I am told it comes from the onomatopoeic sound used to _call_
a cat in Spanish. One exception is the language isolate Waorani, where
the word for 'cat' is "kitty" (not spelled that way, but pronounced
almost exactly that way). I leave it to you to guess where that came from.
--

Mike,

   There was a spate of publication about that word in Southwestern US
and Mexican Indian languages some 30 years ago, and the scholarship at
the time was that it was somehow derived (not clear how) from a version
of "mozo" 'servant'. There may be more recent research on the question.

   Rudy Troike



 
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