pomme de terre

[David Costa]

This wanderwort might have come from Algonquian. The closest thing there is
to a reconstructible Proto-Algonquian word for 'mushroom' is
*wa:pato:wa~*ato:wa (the 'optional' *wa:p- on the front means 'white'). With
'white' on the front, we have:

Illinois wa:panto:wa 'mushroom'
Ojibwe wa:bado: 'rhubarb, shelf fungus'
Potawatomi wabdo 'mushroom'
Menominee wa:patow 'mushroom'

Without the *wa:p- on the front, it's more irregular, but we at least have:

Shawnee hatowa 'mushroom'
Illinois ato:wa 'blood clot'
Fox ato:wa 'blood-clot'
Menominee wato:w 'ball'
Cree wato:w 'clot, ball made of hide-trimmings'
Montagnais utwi '(son) caillot du sang'
Penobscot ato'wsakwe 'jack o' lantern, false chanterelle' (mushroom species)

I personally have never quite been able to see why there should be a
semantic connection between blood clots and mushrooms. Maybe because both
can be ball-shaped (???) and 'ball' was the original meaning?

Anyway, the Creek form is presumably a loan from some Algonquian form with
the *wa:p- present on the front. Shawnee makes the most geographic sense,
tho no form such as **wa:patowa happens to be documented for Shawnee.

Dave Costa




----------
>From: "Rankin, Robert L" <rankin at ku.edu>
>To: "'Alan H. Hartley '" <ahartley at d.umn.edu>, "'Siouan '"@hooch.Colorado.EDU
>Subject: RE: pomme de terre
>Date: Sun, Feb 3, 2002, 12:09 pm
>

> All of that is very interesting in light of the fact that the word for
> 'mushroom' in one of the Muskogean languages, Creek I think, is /pato/.
> That makes it look like one of those "wanderwoerter" that we sometimes find
> all over the hemisphere (as I recall mak 'hand' and wat 'boat' are others).
>