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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