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--- Costentin Cornomorus <elemtilas@hidden.email> wrote: <snip> > > Many of my words are well documented in little > > notebooks of spices or body parts or fruits or > > animals > > or whatnot, but a few are really frustrating to > > track > > down. Where DID I come up with some of these > > words?!?! > > When that happens for Kerno, I invoke "borrowing > from Brithenig", "folk innovation", "Celtic root" > or "etymon unknown". Yep, except, I don't have a Brithenig to borrow from. I really need to invent a few "folk innovations" for C-a. I have several words marked as "Semitic", but that usually means I snagged a Hebrew word and maybe tinkered with the vowels a bit to stand in fo a Punic root I couldn't find. I do have one or two "etym. unk."'s in the dictionary, but they're genuine coinages or onomot. And I really hate to label something "unknown" when I just know some one of the several dozen smarty-pantses on these lists is going to send me an email someday saying "Why is that marked unk.? It sure looks like it comes from X to me." Then I'll feel like a real D'oh-nut. <snip> > > But now I've come up with a word I have no > > recollection of coining -- chirgada. It means > > "checkers", as in the game. But I have no idea > > where > > this word came form. I've checked my note book > > on > > games which shows all the Romlangs having some > > variant > > of "dama". I've checked all my Arabic > > dictionaries > > and none of them even *have* checkers so it > > couldn't > > be that. I can't believe I found a Punic root > > for > > THAT. I can't find the Greek so I doubt that > > was the origin. > > It looks a heck of a lot like English "checkers", > you know! It could also ultimately be > Arabo-Persian, as is English checkers. Compare > with check mate, "sh�h m�t". Both checkers and > chess derive from sh�h. > > Could any of that give you chirgada? > > Padraic. > Well, you might be just the smarty-pants I was talking about above. I seem to recall now looking in that English etymology book that is now in storage and thinking "Well, why-the-heck don't Spanish got 'is cheer word ifn English gots it." Unfortunately, my English dictionary only traces the etym. back to ME! I wonder what Miriam Webster has on-line . . . Adam ===== Il prori ul pa雝veju fi dji atexindu mutu madji fached. -- Carrajena proverb