FW: [SEELANGS] pronun. of "Medvedev" (cont.)

[Jerry Katsell]

Thanks Bob-- Fair enough <med + u + ed> with ed meaning "eat". I was thinking in a folk etymological way ("ved" = "know") that bears are pretty smart and smell out and therefore know where the honey is. What is the original Indo-European for "bear," which had become taboo and thus substituted out?

Jerry Katsell

-----Original Message-----
From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list [mailto:SEELANGS at BAMA.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of Robert A. Rothstein
Sent: Sunday, March 02, 2008 11:56 AM
To: SEELANGS at BAMA.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] FW: [SEELANGS] pronun. of "Medvedev" (cont.)

Jerry Katsell wrote:
> Of course, on the morphemic level, the poor beast can no longer "know
> the honey"
[Encoding = Unicode UTF-8]

He doesn't have to; he only needs to eat the honey. Medved' < med + ŭ + 
ěd, with the last root meaning "eat" and the whole word apparently a 
substitute for the original Indo-European word for "bear," which had 
become taboo.

Bob Rothstein

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