Nahuatl Word of Interest

a.appleyard at BTINTERNET.COM a.appleyard at BTINTERNET.COM
Tue Jan 27 16:41:19 UTC 2004


  Frances Karttunen <karttu at NANTUCKET.NET> wrote:-
> ... Oquichmicqui doesn't mean a dead husband. It means a widow,
> that is a woman who is husband-wise dead.

> Likewise, ci:huamicqui refers to a man who has lost his wife to
> death.

Some people would call that sort of compound a bahuvrihi: "she whose corpse is a husband", "he whose corpse is a wife". Compare English "yellowlegs" (a sort of American bird) = "it whose legs are yellow".



More information about the Nahuat-l mailing list