Old Prussian poaris

Acta Linguistica Lithuanica 2025, vol. 92, pp. 1–8 Contents link / Turinio nuoroda ISSN 2669-218X (online / elektroninis) Copyright © 2025 Václav Blažek. Published by the Institute of the Lithuanian Language. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. // Išleido Lietuvių kalbos institutas. Šis straipsnis yra atviros prieigos, platinamas pagal „Creative Commons“ priskyrimo licencijos sąlygas, leidžiančias neribotai naudoti, platinti ir atkurti turinį bet kokioje laikmenoje, nurodant autorių ir šaltinį. Received: / Gauta: 2025-04-24. Accepted: / Priimta: 2025-05-17. 1 OLD PRUSSIAN poaris Senosios prūsų poaris VÁCLAV BLAŽEK Masaryk University E-mail: bla[email protected]ni.cz ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6797-7188 Fields of research: Baltic & Indo-European etymology and onomastics. https://doi.org/10.35321/all92-02 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ABSTRACT The article analyses the isolated Old Prussian word poaris ‘mole cricket’ from the point of view of word formation and etymology. For this reason, all published etymological attempts are collected and evaluated. Finally, a new solution is proposed, operating with the IE root *per- ‘to step over, pass across; penetrate’, which allows us to derive from the same root the designation of ‘worm’ in Middle Iranian Sogdian, Khotanese and in several modern Iranian languages from Pamir. The common semantic denominator for the zoonyms ‘mole cricket’ and ‘worm’ is ‘penetrating one’. KEYWORDS: mole cricket, worm, Old Prussian, Iranian, etymology. ANOTACIJA Straipsnyje žodžių darybos ir etimologijos požiūriu analizuojamas vienas senosios prūsų kalbos žodis poaris ‘kurklys’. Dėl šios priežasties surinkti ir įvertinti visi paskelbti etimologijos bandymai. Galiausiai, remiantis ide. šaknimi *per- ‘peržengti, pereiti; prasiskverbti’, siūlomas naujas sprendimas, leidžiantis iš tos pačios šaknies išvesti vidurinių iranėnų sogdų, chotanų ir kelių dabartinių iranėnų kalbų iš Pamyro pavadinimą kirminas. Zoonimų kurklys ir kirminas bendras semantinis vardiklis yra ‘prasiskverbiantis’. ESMINIAI ŽODŽIAI: kurklys, kirminas, senoji prūsų kalba, iranėnų kalbos, etimologija. 1. Old Prussian poaris is in Elbing Vocabulary 777 glossed by “Ostpreussisch” “werre”, in Modern German “Maulwurfsgrille”, i.e. ‘mole cricket’ = Gryllotalpa gryllotalpa. Gryllotalpidae represent a family of grasshoppers (bush-crickets). 2 2. Probably the first etymological attempt was proposed by Antonín Matzenauer in his ms. initiated in 1873, but published only in 2009 (!), p. 105 (Havlová, ed., 2009). He speculated about the conjecture +parpis, to compare it with the Lithuanian counterpart parplỹs 1 “European mole cricket / Gryllotalpa gryllotalpa”, by Adalbert Bezzenberger parplas ‘scorpion’, the transparent derivative of the onomatopoetic verb pa pti, parpiù, parpiaũ ‘to emit a high monotonous sound, whirr, clatter; emit a repeated muffled sound (about birds); snort (about a horse); be hoarse, have a sore throat, speak in a hoarse voice; snore’ (Smoczyński 2018: 914–15); cf. also Latvian parpala ‘grouch, grumbler’ (Fraenkel 1962: 542). Vytautas Mažiulis (2013 [1988–1997]: 725) reconstructed a o-stem *pārīs and derived it from the verb preserved e.g. in Old Church Slavonic pariti ‘to fly’. It is the iterative with the lengthened root-vowel from the verb pьrati ‘to be rising’ (Vykypěl, ESJS X 627; XII 739). In East Baltic there are probable cognates in Lithuanian spa nas ‘wing of a bird or insect’, Latvian sp rns „wing“, related to Vedic parṇá- ‘feather; leaf’, Avestan parəna- ‘feather; wing’, Sogdian pārra- ‘wing’, Middle Persian parr ‘feather’, Pašto pāṇa id., all from the IE root *(s)per- ‘to fly’ (Mayrhofer, EWAI II 97; Kümmel, LIV 2001 [1998]: 579–580). The mole cricket belongs to the winged insects, and that is why this semantic motivation is undoubtedly thinkable. The problem is that the continuants of the IE s-mobile cluster *(s)phave usually been unique in Baltic, i.e. *spor *p-, always in both East Baltic and Old Prussian 2 : (a) Lithuanian spáinė ‘foam on the surface of water, on a wave’; Old Prussian spoayno ‘Gest’ [EV 387] = ‘beer froth’, Latin spūma ‘foam’ vs. Old Church Slavonic pěna ‘foam’, Old High German feim ‘foam’ etc. (Pokorny 1959: 1001: *(s)po mno-; Mažiulis 2013 [1988–1997]: 873; Smoczyński 2018: 1250); (b) Lithuanian pántis, -čio ‘hobble, rope for tying the legs of a horse to prevent it from straying’, pl. pánčiai ‘tethers, fetters’; Old Prussian panto ‘Vesser (= Fessel)’ [EV 542] = ‘tether’; Old Church Slavonic pǫto ‘tether’, all derived from the verb attested in Lithuanian p nti, pinù ‘to weave, twine, plait, wreathe (a garland); (en)tangle’, Latvian pît, pinu ‘to plait, interweave’; Old Church Slavonic pьnǫ ‘I stretch“, inf. pęti ‘to plait, clasp’, with prefixes sъpęti 1 The analogical word formation and semantic motivation is characteristic for the synonym in Lithuanian kurklỹs, gen. -io ‘European mole cricket / Gryllotalpa gryllotalpa, an insect living in damp soil and gnawing at plant roots; scorpion’. It represents an agent noun in -lys from the verb ku kti ‘to croak, quack (about a frog); cluck (about a hen); spawn (about a frog)’, Latvian kùrkt ‘to croak, quack’; further Old Church Slavonic krъknǫti ‘to whine, squawk’, Russian kerkatь ‘to whistle, whine’ (Smoczyński 2018: 639–40). 2 One counter example was proposed by Mažiulis (2013 [1988–1997]: 667), assuming for Old Prussian paycoran ‘sebengestirne’ [EV 6], i.e. „Siebengestirn“ = English ‘Seven Sister’ or ‘the Pleiades’, the conjecture *paito, plus the suffix *-āra-, to compare the root with Lithuanian spiẽčius ‘swarm of bees, separate colony of bees’, from the verb spiẽstis, spiẽčiasi, spiẽtėsi ‘to swarm, leave an old hive in order to build a new one; assemble, swarm, gather, associate’ etc. (Smoczyński 2018: 1258). But already Brückner (1898: 513) offered the solution without any conjecture and s-mobile, analyzing paycoran as the compound, where he identified the first member with Lithuanian paĩkas ‘silly, stupid, dull; unwise’ and second one with óras ‘air; weather’. He saw an analogy in the designation of another ‘Siebengestirn’, namely ‘Regensiebengestirn’ „Hyades“, in Polish dżdżownice (vs. dżdżowy ‘rainy’), where the meaning ‘rain“ should represent ‘bad weather’. 3 ‘to bind, hobble’, zapęti ‘to knock down; tie up’; further Greek πένομαι ‘I toil, work, am busy’; Armenian hanowm ‘I weave’; Tocharian A pänw-, B pänn- ‘to stretch’ vs. Gothic spinnan ‘to spin’ (Pokorny 1959: 988; Mažiulis 2013 [1988–1997]: 665–666; Smoczyński 2018: 909, 966); Middle Breton (1499) queffnid coll. ‘spiders’, sglt. queffnidenn > Welsh cyffniden id. (GPC), Breton kevnid id. < *kom-speno (Pedersen 1909: 185; Deshayes 2003: 389), all from the root *(s)penh1- (Kümmel, LIV 2001 [1998]: 578–79). 4. Wojciech Smoczyński (2000: 195) saw in poaris an adaptation of German Werre 3 ‘mole cricket’ (cf. also Schmalstieg 2015: 247), although in Old Prussian there was no direct analogy for the substitution of German wby Old Prussian p-. But there are examples from East Baltic, documenting this substitution: Lithuanian péršas ‘verse of the Holy Scripture, of a song’ < Prussian Germanic verš ‘verse’; Latvian pe ša, pērša, pèrša ‘verse’ < (Middle) Low German versch(e) id. (Smoczyński 2018: 949). 5. The solutions (2) and (3) are possible, but, certainly, encompasse some flaws. For this reason the following new proposal is offered. In Iranian languages there are promising cognates in designation of ‘worm’ or similar insects: Khotanese voc.sg. pira ‘worm’, nom. pl. pära, acc. pl. pīra, abl.-instr. pl. pīryau jsa ‘with worms’ (Bailey {= B} 1979, 239). These forms are derivable from Proto-Iranian *p a- ~ *par a-, cf. parallel cases such as Khotanese bira ‘dress’ < *b ia- (B 287), pira- ‘house’ < *p a- (B 239), mir-/mär- < *m a- = present from mar- ‘to die’ (B 324); besides dīra- ‘low’ < *adar a- (B 159), gīrai- ‘objector’ < *gar aka- (B 84), kīra- ‘work, deed’ < *kar a- (B 60), pīr- ‘to believe’ < *par a- (B 239). Let us mention that ä and i are allophons of the same vowel, cf. mir-/mär- < *m aquoted above or mästa- ~ miśta- ‘great’, corresponding to Avestan masitaid. (B 333). The Khotanese word is not isolated within Iranian. There are attractive cognates in the so-called Pamir languages (cf. Bailey 1979: 239): Wakhi p(ə)rič ‘insect, worm, wood-worm, wood-borer’ (Paxalina 1975: 243) ~ prič ‘worm, caterpillar’ (Steblin-Kamenskij 1999: 267) ~ porič ‘worm’ (Badakhshi 2004 [1960]: 96); perhaps < *parīčī- (?) with a similar development of vowels as Wakhi strin ‘sterile’ < *starīnīwith regard to Vedic star - (Steblin-Kamenskij 1999: 317); Iškašimi pьčúk (Paxalina 1959: 226) ~ ‘caterpillar’ (Steblin-Kamenskij 1999: 267) ~ putsuk ‘worm, grub’ (Grierson 1920: 92) ~ pōčūk ‘worm’ (Badakhshi 2004 [1960]: 96); 3 The East Prussian dialectism Werre was first attested in the 16th cent. (Kluge 2011 [1883]: 983, 991 presented the etymology based on German adj. wirr ‘tangled, snarled’, Old High German wirran ‘to mat, snarl, (en)tangle’, but it is not convincing for semantic reasons). Kroonen (2013: 580–581) identified promising cognates in Dutch weern ‘stye’, Danish verne ‘warble, warble fly larva’, Swedish dial. verna, Norwegian vere ‘larva of the gad-fly; hole in the skin resulting from gad-fly infestation’, which should reflect the pair *wer(r)ōn- & *wernōnin Germanic, reconstructing the Pre-Germanic paradigm *érH-ōn, gen. * erH-n-ós. Kroonen (l.c.) added that the meaning of the probable cognate in Lithuanian v ras ‘tapeworm, larva; pimple’ opens a space for comparison with Latin varus ‘pimple, inflamed spot on the skin’; Tocharian B weru ‘blister’, since they have been caused by various insects. 4 Sangleči pečuk (Morgenstierne 1938: 406: *pərčuk) ~ pōčūk ‘worm’ (Badakhshi 2004 [1960]: 96); ?Yazghulami pək/g ‘damaging worm living in apricots“ (Edeman 1971: 192; Paxalina 1975: 243). The forms of Iškašimi, Sangleči and maybe Yazghulami are perhaps derivable from *parīčī- + *-aka-? There is still one possible cognate in the Middle Iranian languages, but with a different derivational suffix, namely *-ān-: Sogdian Buddhist pr’n’k, pl. pr’nyt ‘insect, worm’ /parānē/, Manichean pr’ny, pl. pr’nyt ‘small animal, insect’ /parānē/ (Gharib 1995: 6979, 6982; Gershevitch 1961: 144, § 966) < *parānaka4 . Let us mention that Harold W. Bailey (1979: 239) also thought about an Iranian origin of the Permic and Ugric designation of ‘worm’: Komi perk (I) ‘Filz-, Schamlaus; Phthirius pubis’; Mansi (P LU LO) pērk ‘Bauchwurm; (LU LO) Wurm (im Fleisch); (LU) Angelwurm’, Hungarian férëg, acc. férget ‘Wurm, Insekt’ (first 1152); (dial.) ‘allerlei schädliche Tiere: Maus, Ratte, Iltis, Wolf, Bär’ < *perkɜ (*perkkɜ) ‘worm’ (UEW I 373; EWU 1994: 381). 6. The various representatives of the class Insecta introduced here should be characterised by some common feature, to be related in a linguistic sense. A common semantic denominator of ‘mole cricket’, ‘caterpillar’ and various kinds of ‘worms’ is ‘penetration’, namely through clay, wood, fruit, etc. This idea implies the etymology based on the IE root *per- ‘to step over, pass across; penetrate’ (Pokorny 1959: 816–817; Schirmer & Kümmel, LIV 2001 [1998]: 472–73) > Vedic par- ‘to bring across, over’ (EWAI II 85–86); Avestan pār-/fr- ‘to go over, cross over’ (Cheung 2007: 293–94); Greek πείρω ‘I perforate, pierce, pervade’ (Beekes 2010: 1163–1164), Church Slavonic (of Russian redaction) naperjǫ, naperiti ‘натыкать’ = ‘to spike, pin’ (Sreznevskij 1902: 307) etc. The semantic motivation is comparable with Greek τερηδών ‘wood-worm’ [Ar. Eq. 1308] = ‘boring one’; cf. τετραίνω ‘I pierce, perforate’, τέρετρον ‘auger, borer’, Old Irish tarathar, Old Welsh tarater id. etc. (Buck 1949: n. 3.84; Beekes 2010: 1468) < IE *terh1- ‘to rub, bore’ (Pokorny 1959: 1071–1072; Kümmel, LIV 2001 [1998]: 632–633). 7. Old Prussian poaris ‘mole cricket’ can, thus, reflect Proto-Baltic lengthened grade *pār a-, the result of an inner Baltic development. It would stand isolated within the Baltic, and, for this reason, it might be useful to illustrate its place in a process of word-formation on analogical examples: Old Prussian poaris resembles in its word-formation soalis ‘Krewtecht’ [EV 293], i.e. ‘herb’, which represents the lengthened grade *źāl afrom the o-grade saligan ‘grune’ [EV 468], i.e. ‘green’ (Mažiulis 2013 [1988–1997]: 870, 801–802). It is derivable from *źali a-, similarly as Lithuanian žol ‘grass, herb’, Latvian zâle ‘herb’ < *źāli āvs. Lithuanian žãlias ‘green, unripe, raw’, Latvian zaļš id. < *źali a-, all from the verb attested in Lithuanian žélti, žẽlia ‘to grow, producing greenery (of grass, bushes); rise from the ground, grow, sprout; show 4 Sogdian S, B β’r’k, M β’ryh C b’ry /βr/ ‘rider; riding animal’, Yaghnobi vṓra ‘rider’ < *β ra’i < *bāraka-; cf. 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Senosios prūsų poaris SANTRAUKA Senosios prūsų kalbos žodis poaris iki šiol etimologizuotas trimis skirtingais atžvilgiais: Adalbertas Bezzenbergeris, siekdamas jį palyginti su lietuvišku atitikmeniu parplỹs 5 ‘kurklys’, įvedė sąvoką +parpis; Wojciechas Smoczyńskis pritaikė vokiečių žodį Werre ‘kurklys’; V. Mažiulis jį kildino iš veiksmažodžio, išlikusio, pavyzdžiui, senojoje bažnytinėje slavų kalboje, pariti ‘skristi’, kuris turėtų būti siejamas su liet. spanas ‘paukščio ar vabzdžio sparnas’ ir kt. Šiame straipsnyje pateikiamas naujas sprendimas, lyginant senosios prūsų kalbos poaris su rytų iranėnų kalbos pavadinimu kirminas, išlikusiu chotanų nom. pl. pära, acc. pl. pīra, vachių p(ə)rič ‘vabzdys, sliekas, kirminas, medgraužis’, budistų sogdų pr’n’k, pl. pr’nyt 5 Tokia pat žodžių daryba ir semantinė motyvacija būdinga lietuvių kalbos sinonimui kurklỹs, gen. -io ‘paprastasis kurklys (Gryllotalpa gryllotalpa), drėgnoje dirvoje gyvenantis ir augalų šaknis graužiantis vabzdys; skorpionas’. Jis žymi veikėjo pavadinimą su galūne -lys, padarytą iš lietuvių veiksmažodžio ku kti ‘kvaksėti, krykšti (apie varlę); kudakuoti (apie vištą); kvarkti (apie varlę)’, latvių kùrkt ‘kvaksėti, krykšti’; toliau senosios bažnytinės slavų kalbos krъknǫti ‘inkšti, klykti’, rusų kerkatь ‘švilpti, inkšti’ (Smoczyński 2018: 639–640). 8 ‘vabzdys, kirmėlė’ ir kt., visi jie yra kilę iš šaknies *per- ‘peržengti, pereiti; prasiskverbti’, o tai reiškia tiek senosios prūsų, tiek rytų iranėnų kalbų vabzdžių pavadinimų bendrą semantinį vardiklį ‘prasiskverbiantis’.