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Carl Edlund Anderson scripsit:
> Can anyone suggest an etymology for Latin _casa_? I notice that it
> doesn't display the usual /s/ > /r/ rhoticism, and figure it must be a
> dialect word or other borrowing -- but from where? I haven't found
> discussion of this word's origins in my (admittedly very limited)
> collection of resources, nor online.
It probably does come from another dialect. In Classical Latin it
meant "hut, cottage, shack", and probably was the word for an ordinary
person's house -- as opposed to "domus", a more upscale sort of place
altogether, as shown by its use in the Romance languages to mean
"cathedral", and by association "roof, dome".
It is surely connected with castrum = fort, and perhaps with cassis <
cad-sis = helmet, head covering, which are from IE *kes-.
--
Dream projects long deferred John Cowan <jcowan@hidden.email>
usually bite the wax tadpole. http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
--James Lileks http://www.reutershealth.com