#dennydoeswords another thing I take as axiomatic, but seemingly most mainstream linguists do not, is that the null hypothesis in etymology should be “this is a native word”, not “this is a borrowing from a nameless unrelated and unidentifiable lost language”. This makes me a heretic, I suppose.

For the sporadic sound change Italic *#f- > h- cf. e.g. the Sabellic borrowing hirpus ‘wolf’ which in my opinion goes back to a proto-Italic form *ferikwos < *jhwer-(i)-ğq-o- ‘looking like a beast’ #dennydoeswords

While the borrowed verb habeo went in another direction from meaning ‘I have received my share’ to a general word for ‘I have X’

Meanwhile English ‘have’ Dutch hebben etc < *kħep- ‘to hold, keep, grab’ whence we also get words like “capture” iirc #dennydoeswords

#dennydoeswords in my opinion both verbs go back to proto-Italic *fagwēō, a deadjectival verb from an unattested adjective *fagwos < *bhħgwós meaning ‘having received one’s share’

The inherited verb faveo went from meaning ‘I have received my share’ to ‘I am satisfied’ or similar

#dennydoeswords
English ‘have’ and Latin ‘habeo’ meaning ‘have’ are false friends: they look and mean similar but are unrelated. In my opinion, Latin borrowed the verb habeo from a vernacular Sabellic or other Osco-Umbrian language, and the inherited form of the Italic word is faveo ‘show favor’

Random thought:

Maybe Proto-Germanic gaistaz ‘ghost, spirit, mind, agitation/fear’ is a prefixed nominal in ga- < *`oisħtos < root *`eysħ- forming words related to agitation, anger, excitement, propulsion etc

#dennydoeswords

Re: the ‘folksy’ contractions, i postulate PCelt makŵos / makkŵos ‘son, boy’ < contraction of magŵākos < magus + -ākos with gemination only appearing in Goidelic perhaps because of how intervocalic -gŵ- was resolved in different branches of Celtic??? I dunno #dennydoeswords

Further I don’t think the idea that a sequence of plain voiced consonant + laryngeal yields a breathy voiced consonant in Sanskrit holds up under scrutiny. So it’s better to assume mahā- goes back to a root with -ġh- not -ġħ- #dennydoeswords

And the Germanic cognate maguz are from PIE *mħeġh- ‘be reared, be brought up, be of remarkable size’ whence Lithuanian mažas ‘small’, Sanskrit mahā ‘big’ #dennydoeswords

The same root yielded a Celtic word for ‘forest’, the English word ‘heath’, Latvian kāja also meaning ‘leg’, and perhaps Sanskrit kaya ‘body, flesh’ #dennydoeswords

e.g. Matasovic and perhaps others seem to presume that Irish cos ‘leg’ and Welsh coes ‘leg’ are cognate, which seems reasonable at first glance, but ultimately I think they’re not even from the same root. I think the welsh comes from PCelt kaissus < *keħy-(t)- ‘dense, fleshy, bushy’ #dennydoeswords

These avoidance terms for dying and death notably only apply to humans and for some reason bees, pointing to their ancient tabooistic origins (the verb for ‘to die’ of non-humans and non-bees is ngordh <? *en-kār-dh- ‘grow stiff?’ < *keħr- ‘hard, stiff, rock’) #dennydoeswords

The euphemistic term *duhvokanis ‘the bad word’ > modern Albanian vdekje ‘death’
Replaced whatever the inherited Indo-European word was < *mer- ‘to die’

Later, Albanian also borrowed the word ‘mort’ from the Vulgar Latin word for death *morte(m) < classical Latin mors

#dennydoeswords

Actually that hypothetical acoyl should prolly be aciwl? Would that reduce to acul when the second syllable wasn’t stressed? I dunno. What a mess. #dennydoeswords

The only bit of corroborating evidence might be an Old Armenian word coyl “idle, lazy, lethargic” if the semantic drift was from “cold” to “inactive, listless” vriddhi *sgōlis vel sim but that’s not a certain etymology at all #dennydoeswords

The root *gel- meaning ‘cold’ can also be reconstructed as *(s)gel with s-mobile, to explain e.g. Slavic *xoldǔ ‘cold’ < *sgol-dh-o-
If in pre-Armenian only the s-mobile was retained in the compound: *ħan(t)-sgōl-(s?n?) that could, I think, regularly yield the attested form acuł #dennydoeswords

On the other hand, if one supposes a compound term *ħan(t)(s?)-gVl- “against the cold” i.e. coals or embers used to keep oneself warm against winter frost, that would allow the -gj- in thëngjill to make sense. *tpes(o)-ħangel(nos?) #dennydoeswords

Like, there is a generally accepted idea that Armenian retained some vestige of labiovelars in the environment **anGŵV > **awJV but acuł should then be awcuł > ōcuł

So the primary piece of ‘evidence’ for reconstructing *Hengŵōl with a labiovelar is very suspect #dennydoeswords

As for the ‘charcoal’ word, I am not so convinced it’s from the same root, especially if we want to include Albanian thëngjill whose -gj- suggests the palatalization of a plain velar rather than a labiovelar which would presumably yield -z- instead #dennydoeswords

#dennydoeswords the big puzzle I’m trying to unravel right now is a pair of Indo-European words, one meaning ‘fire’ and one meaning ‘charcoal’. Traditionally linguists have assumed that they come from the same root, but I’m leaning against that currently.