LIETUVIŲ TERMINOLOGIJA LIETUVOS TSR MOKSLŲ AKADEMIJA

S. KARALIONAS

FROM THE HISTORY OF POTTERY TERMINOLOGY IN THE BALTIC LANGUAGES

In the linguistics of individual peoples and groups, there is a discernible tendency to study the terminology of crafts as a whole from both synchronic and diachronic perspectives. Describing the terms of one language or a group of languages provides essential knowledge about the terminology system of a given field and its features, the functioning of its terms, and trends in their change and expansion. A comprehensive description and historical study of terminology reveal the specific character of the language, show the areal distribution of terms, and help characterize the oldest linguistic relationships and determine their nature. The study of terminology in individual crafts (knitting and spinning, woodworking, blacksmithing, pottery, etc.) has acquired considerable practical and theoretical significance and has become a pressing concern.

Among recent works on Slavic craft terminology, first and foremost should be mentioned O. Trubachov’s excellent monograph “The Craft Terminology of the Slavic Languages,” in which the origins of the terminology of several crafts are newly and expertly revealed through group reconstruction¹. J. Trier’s etymological studies², devoted to pottery terms in Germanic and other Indo-European languages, were so important in their theoretical and methodological premises that they laid the foundations for modern research into craft terminology across all Indo-European languages.

Craft terminology in Lithuanian has been scarcely studied synchronically and almost not at all diachronically. For the reasons indicated above, the study of craft terminology must be regarded as one of the most pressing tasks of Lithuanian linguistics. The urgency of studying craft terminology is also demonstrated by the fact that specialists in other fields undertake to explain linguistic matters connected with craft ethnography or archaeology³.

It cannot be said that the origins of the names for the central concepts of pottery—the act of throwing and its result—have not been explained. On the contrary, žiesti, púodas and their cognates in other Baltic languages have long attracted the attention of etymologists; the explanations proposed for their origins are more or less satisfactory both phonetically and semantically⁴. O. Trubachov’s new etymology is also interesting and entirely plausible,

¹ O. H. Трубачев, Ремесленная терминология в славянских языках, М., 1966.

² J. Trier, Lehm. Etymologien zum Fachwerk, Marburg, 1951.

³ But they do not always get everything right. For instance, the assertion that “Linguists’ research has shown that the Lithuanian word ‘žiesti’ is of Slavic origin” is fundamentally erroneous (I. Mulevičienė, On the term “throwing wheel,” MAD, Series A, 2(36), 1971, p. 129). No linguist has ever said this. The article also contains other ill-considered claims: “Rotary movements are more characteristic of the word ‘žiesti’” (!), “light-type wheel,” “heavy-type wheel” (a light, heavy type?!).

⁴ E. Fraenkel, LEW, p. 668, 1307 (with literature). — Lithuanian púodas, Latvian puõds compared with Old Icelandic fat ‘vessel, utensil’ and Old High German faz ‘ditto’, etc., is uncertain, since Germanic *fata- < *podo- ‘vessel, utensil’

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that the pot originated from pãdas, by lengthening the root vowel through ablaut⁵ (cf. Slavic dialectal vognь < *ugnis ‘fire’: vygnь < *ūgnis ‘smithy’). But one circumstance must be borne in mind, one which the author of this etymology himself has also observed: „Связь прабалтий. *pōda-s and *pada-s нам кажется вполне очевидной, однако понять ее можно только на дополнительском уровне отношений, поскольку апофония ō:a в балтийском не существует как таковой“⁶.

This article nevertheless seeks to examine, from an internal linguistic perspective, the principal pottery terms žiešti, pūodas and their counterparts in the other Baltic languages, focusing especially on finding related lexemes in the same language, which often make it possible to explain the origin of the lexemes under consideration in an entirely different way.

1. Relatives of Lithuanian pūodas and Latvian puōds

The lexeme pūodas in Lithuanian now means ‘a metal vessel for cooking food; a clay vessel (e.g. for keeping something), a pot; a fish trap, a weir; a stove tile’⁷. According to the available data, it is used in all Lithuanian dialects. This word is also often found in old writings and dictionaries (by M. Daukša, J. Bretkūnas, S. Chilinskis, K. Sirvydas, and Krauzė), where it means ‘clay vessel, pot’. This meaning should therefore be considered older than ‘metal vessel for cooking food’, which undoubtedly arose as material objects themselves changed.

Derivatives of pūodas have similar meanings.

Besides puōdinas ‘(adj.) sooty, covered in soot’ (Daugai), formed on the model of sūodinas: sūodys, sūodžiai, derivatives of the lexeme pūodas include puodynė ‘clay vessel (e.g. for pouring milk); a certain old-fashioned stove tile with a deep hollow’, puōdynė ‘pottery workshop; clay pot for grinding poppy seeds or hemp’. The suffix -ynė is quite often used to denote a place (cf. rūkynė ‘a hut for smoking fish’) and containers or implements (cf. karbynė ‘basket’, skalvynė ‘a certain kind of basket for carrying fodder’, skalbynė ‘washboard’, etc.)⁸. Its derivatives usually bear the stress on the suffix, but sometimes on the root as well; cf. laidynė: láidynė, lindynė: lindynė, rūgštynė: rūgštynė, puodynė: puodynė.

It should be noted separately that puodynė, too, is widespread in all Lithuanian dialects, but, according to the available data, this word with the meanings ‘clay pot for grinding poppy seeds or hemp’ and ‘a certain old-fashioned stove tile with a deep hollow’ is known only in the northwestern Samogitian dialects (Dovilai, Leckava, Plikiai, Vieksniai).

⁴Its origin remains disputed: it may be a wandering word, perhaps even one not of Indo-European origin; see J. Hubschmid, Schläuche und Fässer. Wort- und sachgeschichtliche Untersuchungen…, Bern, 1955, p. 156–160. — Finnish pata ‘pot (for cooking food), pot’, Estonian pada ‘the same’ cannot be borrowings from the Baltic languages; cf. Aulis J. Joki, Uralier und Indogermanen, Helsinki, 1973, p. 301.

⁵ О. Трубачев, op. cit., p. 208.

⁶ Loc. cit. — Whether the short vowel o existed in the dialects of the Baltic linguistic community is uncertain (see И. Казлаускас, К развитию общебалтийской системы гласных, ВЯ, 4, 1962, p. 20–24; V. Mažiulis, Baltų ir kitų indoeuropiečių kalbų santykiai, Vilnius, 1970, p. 11 ff.; cf. LKK, X, 1968, p. 52 ff.); cf. Chr. S. Stang, Vergleichende Grammatik der Baltischen Sprachen, Oslo–Bergen–Tromsø, 1966, p. 22 ff.

⁷ “Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language,” vol. X (manuscript).

⁸ P. Skardžius, Lietuvių kalbos žodžių daryba, Vilnius, 1943, p. 271.

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The northwestern Samogitian dialects (Dovilai, Kretingalė, Laukžemis, Mosėdis, Notėnai, Plateliai, Plikiai, Salantai, Skuodas, Šatės) also have the lexeme pūdȳnė, pūdynė ‘a recess built into a stove for putting something in; a certain kind of stove tile; a clay vessel of this kind, a small pot for grinding hempseed and tobacco’. The meanings of the lexemes pūodynė and pūdynė are so close that one cannot help but regard them as sharing a root. The fact that pūdynė and pūodynė, pūodas (Barstyčiai, Mosėdis, Plungė, etc.) are used in the same dialect area precludes supposing that one arose phonetically from the other, all the more so since, as is known, these dialects also preserve the distinction between the vowels uo: ū (dial. ou: ū). Vowel assimilation, whereby in the Dounininkai dialects uu (i.e. ū) appears instead of ou before the narrow vowels of the following syllable, is characteristic of the eastern Dounininkai. Lexical diffusion into the Dūnininkai dialects, which are much too far away, is also scarcely conceivable.

For these reasons, the simplest explanation of the historical relationship between the Samogitian lexemes pūdynė and pūodynė would be that pūdynė is an independent lexical-semantic unit, related through ablaut to the root-sharing lexemes pūodynė and pūodas. In that case, the lexeme pūdynė was apparently formed, according to the aforementioned derivational pattern with the suffix -ynė, from the primary nominal *pūdas, which had meanings such as ‘clay vessel (for grinding hempseed or tobacco)’, ‘a certain kind of stove tile, brick’, and the like. The morphological-derivational relationship between the nouns pūodas: *pūdas (< pūdynė) is the same as that found, for example, between bluõzgas ‘dandruff, flakes’: blūzgas ‘the same’; brūžas ‘a strip, streak, line’: brūžas ‘a scraper, file’; čiūopas ‘a careless and inept person, a clumsy person’: čiūnas ‘one who fumbles about, a clumsy person’; diūobas ‘tree hollow’: dī̀bas ‘bowl’; lūosas ‘one whose leg, arm, or another body part is broken’: lūšas ‘the same’; plūosas ‘bundle, shawl’: plūšas ‘a single bast fiber, bast, strip; splinter, shred’; šūodys ‘Russian’: sūdys ‘the same’; iūognas ‘a waterlogged place, marshy hollow’: liūgnas ‘a small pool, puddle, waterlogged hollow; mudflat, bog; quagmire, swamp; water that overflowed from a river and remained in a meadow’. As can be seen, alongside nouns with root vocalism uo bearing an acute accent, there are nouns with vocalism ū and a circumflex accent—precisely the pattern found in pūodas: pūd- (cf. pūdȳynė).

The lexemes pūdynė, pūodynė, pūodas have more or less similar meanings. Taken together, their semantic content clearly distinguishes, on the one hand, ‘a clay vessel, small pot (for keeping something, grinding acorns, hempseed, or tobacco)’ and, on the other, ‘(a certain old-fashioned) stove tile (with a deep recess, used in building stoves)’ (the meaning ‘a recess built into a stove for putting something in’ may have developed metonymically from the latter). Significantly, a similar relationship between meanings is also found in the corresponding Latvian lexemes.

Lithuanian pūodas is represented in Latvian, as is known, by puõds ‘the pot; the kettle’ (cf. also the derivatives and their meanings puõdelis ‘the pot’, puõdeņš ‘little mug’, puodiņš (without k) ‘a vessel in which food is cooked’ ME 454, EH II 345). Latvian also has names for mushrooms, cf. puõdelis ‘a certain mushroom’, puõdiņš² ‘a young birch bolete’, puõdeņš ‘bērzlape’, but these are most likely new meanings prompted by a certain superficial resemblance between the objects so named. Thus, for historical reconstructions the only meaning that may be more important than ‘the pot’ is krāšns puods, krāšpuods, puodiņš (without k) ‘the stove tile’.

The coexistence of the meanings ‘clay pot, the pot’ and ‘tile, the stove tile (i.e. a certain kind of brick)’ is known elsewhere too; cf. Old Russian плита ‘stone,’

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‘brick’: Serbo-Croatian птица ‘small bowl’; Latin testa ‘brick, tile’: ‘clay vessel, pot’. The data from the corresponding Germanic languages (cf. German Kachel ‘stove tile’ < Old High German chachala ‘clay pot’ < Vulgar Latin *cacculus, cf. Latin caccabus ‘melting pot, frying pan’⁹) and Slavic languages (cf. Russian dialect горшки ‘empty, light, wedge-shaped bricks for constructing vaults’: горшок ‘a rounded, bulbous clay vessel of various kinds, fired in a kiln’¹⁰) suggest that ‘stove tile, the stove tile’ developed from the meaning ‘clay pot, the pot’. The Prussian cognate has precisely the latter meaning.

Prussian podalis ‘poor pot, bad pot’ corresponds exactly, semantically and morphologically, to Samogitian puodālis: in both languages the suffix -alis has an augmentative and pejorative meaning (cf. the Prussian meaning ‘poor pot’!). A pejorative nuance is also evident in the Latvian lexeme puōdelis. Thus, the semantic-morphological identity of derivatives in these three languages apparently does indeed go back to distant antiquity; consequently, when seeking cognates of puōdas, puōds, pod-alis, one should be guided by the meaning ‘clay pot’. At the same time, the lexeme pūd-ynė also points to a direction in which to seek related lexemes, although, as far as is known, it has not hitherto been taken into account.

In one instance, puōdas has the meaning ‘fish trap, basket trap’ in Lithuanian dialects: Kap nuvėjau puodo krėsti, tai pusę puodo radau žuvų ‘When I went to check the fish trap, I found it half full of fish.’ Ūdrija. It might be too bold to say that this is the old, original meaning of puōdas, puōds, pod-alis, but its existence is nevertheless instructive: historically, the difference between the meanings ‘clay pot’ and ‘fish trap, basket trap, i.e. a certain kind of basket or even a kind of barrel’ is not fundamental, and thus both meanings may belong to one word or to different but root-related words (cf. bučius ‘a wicker device with a funnel for catching fish; fish trap; a netted device, resembling a fish trap, for catching fish; a closed wicker basket for keeping caught fish in water; a barrel woven from straw and strips of bark’).

The range of meanings expands further if we also include Latvian puōdiks^² ‘an instep’ ME III 454, puodinieks (without k) ‘the rear part (?)’ EH II 344, and Lithuanian pūdүmas, pūdymas, pūdȳmas ‘buttocks, rear end, seat’.

We may further assign to this group of lexemes and meanings lexemes containing the segment pūd-/pud- in their expression plane, such as Latvian pūdis (without k) ‘the heap; the quantity’, pūdele (also tar pūdelis) ‘the Paudel; the tar Paudel’, pūdenis (without k) ‘a kind of coffee barn’ ME III 445, pudas ‘old junk, old clothes, rags’ (pudat ‘to rummage, pile up’) ME III 401, Lithuanian pūdulas ‘bundle, clump’, Latvian pudra, pudrs ‘a heap’, pudurs, puduris ‘a tuft, a bush with roots; a heap; a small hill’, puduriņš, pudurītis ‘a small wood, a group of trees’ ME III 401–3, EH II 320–1, Lithuanian pūduras ‘a group, heap, area of densely growing trees, shrubs, or crops; cloud’, Latvian pudiks ‘a half-grown boy’, pudikis ‘a ring-shaped iron fitting used to fasten the side ropes to the sides of a boat’ EH II 320.

It would be too difficult, and perhaps also pointless, to seek parallels in other Indo-European (or non-Indo-European) languages for every part of this semantic chain in order to show—

⁹ H. Paul, Deutsches Wörterbuch, Achte Aufl., bearbeitet von A. Schirmer, Halle (Saale), 1961, p. 317.

¹⁰ В. Даль, Толковый словарь, I, М., 1955, p. 382–3.

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…their regularity, and thus their belonging to single-root lexemes. In this, as in other similar cases, it is better to ask whether the established semantic chain as a whole can occur in single-root lexemes or not. Once it has been established that some meaning or group of meanings has lexemes in other languages, or in the same language but with different roots, one can more confidently consider their relatedness, and that of the cases under examination. Thus, the relationship between two meanings, or between an entire group of them, is demonstrated ipso facto.

It should also be borne in mind that the associative features of objects in the external world reflected in the semantic-lexical system are very often not their specific physical properties (for example, clay, wooden, woven), but rather their abstract and generalized characteristics, such as “convexity, prominence,” “hollowness,” and the like. However, such and similar features may, of course, be possessed by several objects, e.g., a heap, bundle, lump, hill, and so on. As a result of long historical development, such associative features are often intertwined with diametrically opposed features, e.g., “convexity, prominence, convexness” with “concavity, concaveness.” Objects in reality or images in the mind that possess the same associative features can apparently be expressed by single-root lexemes.

It should be noted that, in historical development too, as lexical-semantic units and their interrelations took shape, the specific physical properties of objects played a secondary role, since “....the meanings ‘clay-made,’ ‘clay’ figure as purely intermediate links, meanings secondarily made concrete, going back to other meanings, to designations of other technical actions, sometimes of a sufficiently general nature: ‘turn,’ ‘twist,’ ‘weave.’ Particularly interesting here is the remarkable vitality of the semantic model ‘woven around, surrounded’ > ‘clay vessel’... By examples of the etymological identification of its relics, as well as by noting the active reproduction of this semantic model, we come into direct contact with the pre-ceramic antiquity of the material culture of the ancestors of the speakers of Slavic dialects”¹¹. As mentioned, the terminology of pottery in the Baltic languages has scarcely been studied diachronically, but the available material in this field nevertheless suggests that the Baltic languages underwent the same stage in the formation of pottery terms as has here been reconstructed for the Slavic languages. It is quite possible that the root *pūd- ‘(to) blow, puff (out)’ (see below) formerly meant ‘to wind, weave’, since the meanings ‘blow, puff’ and ‘twist, wind, weave’ are closely related; cf., for example, Lithuanian tinti (-sta) and Latvian tīt (tinu) ‘wind, wrap, weave’. It should therefore come as no surprise that explanations of the origins of the principal Baltic pottery terms pūodas, pūods, pod-alis immediately turn to various woven and otherwise curved and convex vessels (basket, vat, and so on) as the oldest objects, whose names, in turn, may further be connected with lexemes denoting various projecting, convex, or, conversely, concave objects.

The following series of lexemes and meanings with different roots are intended to illustrate the possibility of a historical relationship both between the meanings of the two root lexemes puod-/pūd-/pud- and among all of them taken together:

¹¹ О. Н. Трубачев, op. cit., p. 228–9.

9. Lietuvių terminologija

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1) krājus “the sides of a sieve or riddle, the rim, hoop; the rise of the instep, the instep; the part of a shoe at the instep,” krājelis “a device on which yarn is wound before being transferred to the warping frame,” “a scythe or shovel handle; the sides of a sieve or riddle, the rim, hoop,” krājuks “a scythe or shovel handle,” krējis “a device woven from rods, used with a horse-powered threshing machine to shake the straw so that the chaff falls out among the grain,” Latvian kreja “a small dragnet,” Lithuanian krijà “the sides of a sieve or riddle, a hoop; a wooden casing around millstones to prevent flour from scattering while grinding, a vat; a frame supporting a lamp shade; a sieve’s mesh; a bed base woven from cords; a device on which yarn is wound before being transferred to the warping frame; ‘a large piece of ice, a floe,’” krijas “the sides of a sieve or riddle; the upright, fitted edges of a lid; the side or brim of a hat or cap; the sides of a vat; a bootleg; a sieve’s mesh; a bed base woven from cords; a sieve woven from fibres for draining dumplings; a device on which yarn is wound before being transferred to the warping frame; a part of a device for extracting honey from combs; the shaft of a threshing machine to which the flails are attached; a curved iron fitting attached to a cart’s axle to facilitate turning,” Latvian krīja, krijs, krijš “lime bark; stripped lime or spruce bark (formerly, various objects were made especially from lime bark, e.g., sledges, saddles, trousseau chests); the rim of a sieve or riddle; the rim of a sieve, the edge; the upper part of a riddle, to which the mesh is attached at the lower edge; a basket made of lime bark; a limewood board,” Lithuanian krijėlis “a device on which yarn is wound before being transferred to the warping frame; a part of a butter churn, a small cross-shaped beater, a disk” (: krýti “to bend, make crooked,” krýti, krėja, krieči, krieja, krėja “to stretch, wind”);

2) kārpa “(a shepherd’s) bowl; an oval wooden box; a pouch made of bark for collecting berries, a small vessel bent into an elongated rounded shape from a thin board (of ash, birch, or aspen), etc.,” “a wart; a corn,” kārpa “a mussel shell,” Lithuanian kārpa “a small raised, hardened area of skin; hardened protrusions on tree bark or leaves; a nipple, etc.,” Latvian kārpis, kārpe “a flat, almost round fishing boat for catching salmon,” “a bowl, a round wooden vessel into which butter, sour milk, or meat is put,” cērpa, cērps “a mound, a little heap of earth, a raised sand hill; tall grass, especially in marshes, a tussock; a shrub; a tree stump; tree roots; hair, especially disheveled, bushy hair,” cērpuļi “small mounds in marshes overgrown with berry bushes,” Lithuanian kėrpė “a small plant growing on stones, trees, or roofs; a sponge, fungus; a tree growth, knot; thick, cracked, woody birch bark; the crust of a loaf, a corner, the heel of a loaf; the buttocks; the turned-up snout of a pig, its snout, etc.,” kerplā, kėrpla “a very branchy stump; turf,” kerplė, kėrplė “a stump with roots, a clump, the roots of a felled stump; an uprooted tree with roots; a head; someone fat or thickset; someone untidy, disheveled,” kėrplėša, kerplėša “an uprooted tree with all its roots; the roots of an uprooted tree; an old, rotten tree stump overgrown with moss or grass; a tussock; a person covered in beard and hair, slovenly, ugly, etc.” (: kėrpti, -ia “to tie something loosely or hastily,” kerpti, -a “to grow broader, expand, spread”);

3) kārba, kārba “a pouch made of alder or birch bark, especially for gathering strawberries; a vessel made of birch bark; a fishing boat for catching salmon; an oval wooden box,” “a wart,” kārbiņa “a little basket,”

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a box; a roof tile; ciba, a round wooden vessel into which butter, sour milk, and also meat are put, etc.”; Lith. kárba “an old-fashioned counting device of this kind—a little stick with notches cut into it,” karbas “a basket, wicker basket, sieve; a large wicker basket for carrying fodder, a doklas,” “a notch, groove, edge, incision, cut; a projecting edge, irregularity, notching; a stick with notches for marking numbers,” kerba (without k.) “a bunch (of fruit),” kėrbinė “the same,” kirba “a quagmire, bog; a multitude, crowd, throng,” kirbinė “a string, row; a flock; a bunch; a group, heap, crowd,” kirbinė (without k.) “a wicker basket, basket,” kirblys “a stump, plant stem” (: kerbti, -ia “to tie loosely; to weave loosely, poorly,” kirbti, -sta “to turn sour, begin to ferment,” ap-kirbti “to become overgrown, get covered”).

4) Lith. kiaūburas “a hillock,” Latv. kaūba “mountain end,” Lith. kaubarė, kauborė (without k.) “a hollowed-out wooden vessel, wooden bowl,” kaūbras “a low elevation,” kaubrė, kaūbrė “a hillock, hill; hump, hunch,” kaubrỹs “a mountain or hill crest, summit; mound, rise; a kind of puffing up, elevation,” kaūburas “a mountain or hill crest, summit; mound, rise,” Latv. kauburs (without k.) “the hill,” kaūburė “mountaintop,” kauburỹs “a low elevation; a mountain or hill crest, summit; mound, rise, a kind of puffing up, elevation,” Latv. kubis “the head,” kubele, kubela “the glans (of the male organ),” kubis “the pacifier for infants” (for the meaning, cf. knupis “a tied-up cloth in which something is carried; the pacifier for infants”), kubls, kubla, kublis “the tub, vat,” Lith. kublulis (without k.) “a hollowed-out wooden vessel,” dialectal (Samogitian) kūbelas “a tub,” Latv. kubelelis “(contemptuous diminutive) a small tub,” kubals “the tub, vat,” kubils “the same,” Lith. kūbilas “a wide-bottomed barrel for storing flour and grain, fermenting vegetables, and keeping liquids; a lidded barrel for storing clothes; a dowry tub; a large hollowed-out wooden vessel with a fitted bottom, a dugout vessel, etc.,” kubūlkė, kubulkis (without k.) “a little wooden vessel,” Latv. kubuls “the tub, vat,” kubulis “the tub, vat,” “unevenness, mound,” kubris “the hump, hunch,” Lith. kūbrỹs, kūbris “the back at the nape, ridge, crest; back, hump; mountain peak, crest; hillock, mound; unevenness, elevation,” kuborė (without k.) “a large wooden spoon for ladling soup,” kūburas “a little mound of earth dug up by a mole,” kubūrė “a small, stout person,” kū-būrė “a hillock, small elevation, mound; heap,” kuburỹs “summit; hillock, small elevation; mound; unevenness, elevation,” Latv. kuburis “a place on a garment that does not fit well,” Lith. kubūrka, kubūrkė “a little wooden vessel,” Latv. kubucis “curds in sweet milk,” “a large ciba; a wooden drinking vessel; a lidded vessel made of birchbark, in which berries are gathered or tobacco kept; a clod of earth; a small mound; a bread end; a piece of bread; a small rise” (: mu-kiaūbti, -ia “to swell, disappear,” kūbti, -sta “to bend (toward the ground),” Latv. kubinât “to cover,” ap-kubinât “to lay over”);

5) pūnė, pūnė “a partition in a barn for storing chaff, a chaff loft; a cattle shed, open-sided barn, enclosure; a hut, tent; a cave, cavern,” pūnė “the hollow of an egg,” Latv. pūne, pūnis “a barn, hay barn, hay or straw barn; a small barn-like building on the seashore or lakeshore for storing fishing gear; a space near the cattle shed for storing fodder, etc.,” pūnis “a small barn for hay, straw, and chaff; a hay barn in the forest, etc.,” pūns “a peasant’s hut,” pūna “a moth, a large, round wooden vessel with a lid,” pūņa “a damp,”},{

9*

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swampy forest, a bog overgrown with small pines, etc.,” puns, punda, pune, punis “an elevation, a swelling, a lump, knot, hard abscess, knot, growth on a tree, hump,” pauna “the skull; the frontal bone; the head; the mouth,” paũna, paúna, paunis “a small cap; a knapsack, backpack; a little bundle; a small knapsack, a Paudel; rags, junk; bundles, a load.”

For words in some of these five series of lexemes (e.g., pūnė, kūbilas, pūde-le), doubts may arise as to whether they really belong etymologically to the roots to which they are assigned here. These doubts arise not from phonological, derivational, or semantic considerations, but solely for reasons of a different kind (the use of the relevant word somewhere along the border of the Lithuanian or Latvian language area; the existence of an exact lexical equivalent in larger, and thus also more influential, neighboring languages¹², etc.). The meaning of the word forms part of a consistent semantic chain, its relation to other links in that chain recurs in lexemes belonging to other roots, and therefore it, too, may be part of an organic historical process¹³. The word’s derivational features are the same as those exhibited by the derivational pattern active in that language¹⁴. Consequently, the view that gives precedence to the possibility of explaining a lexeme’s origin by means of the language’s own resources cannot be considered absurd.

The words in the final series are especially significant for the etymological identification of puodas, pūodas, pod-al(is) and other pūd- / pud- lexemes, because, as K. Būga¹⁵ has already established, they belong to the same root as the pūd- / pud- lexemes. That root is probably Indo-European *peu- / *pou- / *pū- “to blow, blow out, inflate”¹⁶,

¹² It should be said that this view is not beyond doubt, since, by confusing different historical epochs and present-day geographical and cultural relations, it projects them into the distant past: “a) the geographic area of the Baltic speakers in his day [A. Bach is meant] was very small in comparison with that of the speakers of Germanic languages; b) that in fact in rather recent times the Baltic languages borrowed a great many loanwords from German. For the prehistoric situation then he also considered a similar possibility; c) for decades, it was assumed that there were quite a few borrowings from Proto-Germanic into Baltic but, for some unexplained reason, that Proto-Germanic did not reciprocate by borrowing from Baltic”, — A. Klimas, Baltic, Germanic and Slavic, Donum Balticum, Stockholm, 1970, p. 264—5. In the distant past, these relations may have been fundamentally different, and Baltic dialects may not only have received but also given (not only to Finno-Ugric languages, but also to Indo-European languages to the east and west).

¹³ Cf. the excellent rationale offered by K. Būga for the semantic connection between pūnė “cattle shed” and the other lexemes: K. Būga, RR, II, p. 525—6.

¹⁴ For example, regarding the suffix of kūb-ilas, cf. such names of tools and implements as: brizgilas ‘bridle’, krātilas, krētilas ‘a large sieve for separating threshed grain from chaff’, rūtilas ‘circle, wheel, arc’, rētilas ‘a sieve for tossing chaff’, sprāgilas ‘flail’, trainilas ‘the connecting bar of a cart’. More than one derivative with the suffix -ilas ultimately goes back to a verb; cf. brizgilas (: brizgas): brizgti, brizgėti; sprā-gilas: spragėti, sprogti, and thus also kūbilas: kūbti. For the semantic relations of kūbilas, see also LKK, XII, 1970, p. 181—3. Slavic кобълъ may be an old borrowing from the Baltic languages (cf. raka, rataj, etc.), which also entered the Germanic languages (cf. German Kausche, Kaddig, Daggut, Elen, etc.). The Lithuanian kūb-ilas, kūb-elas has an etymological counterpart in Greek; cf. χϐώλον ‘elbow’; for the relationship between the suffixes *-el/-l- and *-ōl-, cf. obelīs: obuolys; for the meaning and suffix, further compare Greek κύπελλον ‘cup’, derived from the parallel root Indo-European *kup-. — Differently, E. Fraenkel, LEW, p. 304 (with literature); V. Urbutis, Baltistica, VIII, 1972, p. 205; B. Vanagienė, V. Vitkauskas, LKK, XIII, 1972, p. 222.

¹⁵ K. Būga, RR, I, p. 332—3.

¹⁶ For it, see P. Persson, Beiträge zur indogermanischen Wortforschung, I, Uppsala—Leipzig, 1912, p. 241—250; J. Pokorny, IEW, p. 847.

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cf. Arm. heval ‘to breathe quickly and heavily’ (*peudā-), (h)ogi ‘breath, breathing, spirit’ (*pou̯io-), Middle Irish ūan, Welsh ewyn, Breton eon ‘foam’ (*pou̯-ino-). On the basis of this original root, new roots pun- | pūn- | paun- and pud- | pūd- | paud- may have been formed in the Baltic languages with the formatives -n- and -d-. Besides the aforementioned pud- | pūd- lexemes, in that case we may assign to the root pud- | pūd- | paud- the following: Lithuanian pudénti ‘to tease, loosen’, Latvian pudīt (-ījū) ‘to clear away; to rouse someone from sleep suddenly or hurriedly’, -tiės ‘to hurry (to do something)’, sa-pudītiės ‘to get ready for a journey or trip’, pudātiės ‘to dress up for a long time’, sa-pudāt(iēs) ‘to wrap oneself tightly in old clothes’, Lithuanian pūdinti, pūdyti (-ija) ‘to drive, make go, force; to attack’, pudlùs ‘easily shaken out, loose’, Latvian pudlavāt, pudļavāt ‘to blow about, tousle (e.g. said of the wind blowing the ribbons of a headdress)’, pūdulas (see above), pūdulis ‘an untidy, disheveled, tousled person’, pūdulioti, pūduliuoti ‘to tangle, tousle, ruffle, shake, jolt’, su-pūduloti ‘to tangle, tousle’, pūdáloti, pūdalióti, pūdalėti, pūdelioti, pūdáloti ‘to ruffle, tangle, tousle, tease’, apsi-pūdaloti ‘to dress warmly, wrap oneself up’, pūdeluoti, pūdeluoti ‘to crumble, break into small pieces; to blow (hair), curl’, pūdelėti ‘to harrow’, Latvian pūdelēt ‘to muss up the hair’, pūderis ‘one whose hair is puffed up’, pūderioti, pūderioti ‘to tousle (hair); to adorn, decorate’, iš-pūderioti ‘to undo, tear apart, loosen’, pūderėtis ‘to adorn oneself; to rummage, play’, nu-pūderiuoti ‘to tear off, tear up’, Latvian pūderēt ‘to chop, beat, thrash’, paūdēt ‘to make known, spread among people’, paust (-žu) ‘to make known, disseminate publicly’.

There is little doubt that these lexemes belong, it seems, to one family of related words. How the meanings ‘to tangle, tousle, ruffle’, ‘to shake, jolt’, and others developed from the original meaning ‘to blow, blow out, inflate’ is clearly shown by the semantic range of Latvian pudlavāt. Once the oldest meaning ‘to blow (out, up)’ has been reconstructed, it becomes sufficiently clear how the lexemes pūd- | pud-, and hence also puod-, acquired readily distinguishable associative features in their semantic range, such as ‘convexity, protuberance, bulging’, ‘hollowness’, and the like, which therefore ultimately derive from the notion of being inflated.

In the lexemes of both the root pun- and the root pud-, historical semantic development naturally proceeded toward meanings such as ‘bundle, lump, heap, a pile’ (pūdulas, pūduras, pūdis, paūna, paūna), ‘hayloft, hay barn’ (pūdenis, pūnė, pūne, pūnis), ‘fish trap, basket, bag, a knapsack, a rucksack, a small pack, a Paudel’, and ‘clay vessel, jar, pot, a pot, a kettle, a vessel’, which are attested for puodas, pūods, pod-alis, pūd-ynė, pūdele, pūna, paūna, paūna. Since, as the hypothesis developed here suggests, the root vocalism of the lexemes puodas, pūods, pod-alis may belong to the u-grade of ablaut, their root may originally have been *poud-; later, as a result of phonetic development, it may have changed to *pōd-, from which arose Prussian pod-alis and Lithuanian and Latvian puod(a)s.

2. Semantics and cognates of Lithuanian žiėsti and Latvian ziest

Lithuanian žiėsti (-džia) is a verb widely used in the Aukštaitian dialects. Its range of meanings is also broad. In most of the dialects (Alovė, Butrimonys, Leipalingis, Miroslavas, Rudamina, Seinai, Švenčionėliai, Šventežeris, Valkininkai, Žilinai, and others), it means ‘to make something (neatly, beautifully) (clogs, spoons, ladles, sledges, carts, houses)’. Related to this meaning is ‘to (be)get a child’ in Leipalingis,

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Miroslavas, Valkininkai, ‘to sew a hat’ in Alytus, ‘to wind thread into a ball’ in Leipalingis, ‘to smash, beat’ in Nočia (cf. Jau sužiedei tą gražų puodelį). These latter meanings occur in prefixed forms (nu-, su-, etc.) of the verb žiėsti, and are thus variants of the meaning ‘to make something (neatly, beautifully)’.

Another meaning of žiėsti, known in the Aukštaitian dialects (Alovė, Aukšdvaris, Joniškis, Kabeliai, Kapsukas, Linkmenys, Linkuva, Liškiava, Miroslavas, Vadokliai, and others), is ‘to turn, make out of clay’. In the Southeastern Aukštaitian dialects, the verb with this meaning has an acute accent: žiesti (-džia) in Dieveniškės, Jieznas, Mielagėnai, Žilinai.

Even the description of the synchronic semantics of the verb žiėsti (žiesti) shows that its semantic development here, as elsewhere, cf., for example, Old High German mah(h)ōn ‘to make, build, create’ (German machen), Old English macian ‘to (be)make’ (modern make); Greek μάσσω ‘I knead (clay), shape on a potter’s wheel’ (from *magiō, cf. aorist ἐμάγην), proceeded in the direction of generalization: as the relevant situations changed, the word gradually broadened its sphere of use and eventually acquired an abstract meaning of making, acting; cf. also Lithuanian daryti: dirti, Prussian seggit ‘to make’: Lithuanian sėgti.

The aforementioned semantic derivation is undoubtedly a product of earlier times, since both meanings of žiėsti are already found in old Lithuanian writings and dictionaries; cf., on the one hand, M. Daukša’s sentence Tassái… numirėlio mizėrną sutvėrimą, išg dūlkų ir trūpucio mólų nãžiestą [i.e. nūžiestą] DP 320. On the other hand, in K. Širvydas’s dictionary “Dictionarium trium linguarum” (p. 54), žiedžiu is listed alongside Lithuanian lipiu, lienu [infinitives lipýti, liēti], Latin farmo, fingo, aliquid e cera, argilla, figuro, Polish formuję, kształtuję. As can be seen, the meaning ‘to pour/cast’ is given here for the verb žiėsti; this meaning is still recorded in the nineteenth century by A. Kašarauskas, cf. žiedžia, žiesti ‘to shape, form, melt’ Koss 58, and is confirmed by present-day usage, cf. nu-žiesti ‘to cast (an axe in a forge)’ in Miroslavas. The meanings ‘to mold from clay’ and ‘to pour, form’ are related and often occur together, one developing from the other; cf., for example, lipýti ‘to mold, stick, glue; to melt’; liēti ‘to make something from molten metal, wax, or another material; to form; to mold with something, pour…’

In sources from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and later, we also encounter meanings of žiėsti that are absent from present-day usage but may prove important in tracing cognates of the verb in question. First is the meaning found again in K. Širvydas’s dictionary: žiėsti ‘I babble nonsense, make visions, create apparitions, fantasize’ SD 52¹⁷, as well as the meaning of its prefixed form iż-žiedžiu ‘I mark out, express, exprimo, effingo, assimilo, wyrażam’ SD 417. D. Sutkevičius also gives the latter in his nineteenth-century dictionary manuscript: isz-žiedžiu ‘I mark’. These are undoubtedly variants of the basic meaning ‘to make, turn (from clay); to pour, form’.

In the semantic range of the Lithuanian verb žiėsti, žiesti (-džia), the element of molding clay by hand, plastering, and even bricklaying is prominent: in the LKŽ card file (s. v. žiesti), this verb is explicitly explained at numerous locations as ‘to mold from clay (pots, jars, bricks, stoves)’. In this particular feature of its meaning, it is directly related to Latvian ziest (-žu, -du) ‘to smear; to spread a viscous substance; to smooth with something greasy (e.g. hair); to coat a stove with clay’

¹⁷ waydas is explained as follows: ‘A sign, a mental image, species idolum, imago animo obversans’ SD 52.

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“to smear” ME IV 744; compare also the iteratives with the vowel ai žaidi, žaidėt, žaistėt “to smear” ME IV 680–1, EH II 800.

An easily distinguishable component of the meanings “to mold, to cast, to smear” is “to run one’s hand over, stroke, touch by brushing, feel with the hand”; compare Latvian māla sienas ziež “...smooths with the hand” MEIV 744 s. v. ziest. The meanings “to mold, cast, smear; to pour, form” and “to touch (by brushing), feel” coexist elsewhere as well; compare Lithuanian liėti “to make something from molten metal, wax, or something else, to form; to mold with something, cast,” Latvian liēt “to pour (of metals),” laitīt “to stroke, rub down, particularly in the bathhouse, massage,” Lithuanian laitinti “to plaster with clay, lait, to coat; to glue”: Lithuanian lietėtis “to touch, come into contact,” liėsti (-čia) “to touch, make contact,” lytėti “to touch slightly, touch”¹⁸; Latin fingo “I make something from soft material, mold; I touch by stroking, brushing”: Greek ἁγγάνω “I touch (with the hand).”

The meaning “to touch, feel” predominates in the semantic content of the verb žeisti (-džia) “to touch, hurt a wound; to inflict a wound; to become cracked, ill”; compare also the noun žaizdà “wounded place” (from *žaīd-da; compare žaida, rona BB 1 Moz 4.23). This meaning, i.e. “to touch strings,” can also be discerned in the verb žāisti (-džia) “to perform actions for amusement” Alsėdžiai, Jūžintai, Vidiškės, etc.; žāisti (-džia) “to play (an instrument); gamble; coire” Alsėdžiai, Barčiai, Bartninkai, Krekenava, Lazūnai, Zietela; compare also the nouns žaīslas, žāislas “an object used for playing; a game,” žaīslūs “cheerful, playful,” etc., Latvian zaislis “a comedy; laughter” EH II 800¹⁹. The semantic relationship between the lexemes žiešti, žiesti (-džia), on the one hand, and žeisti (-džia), žāisti, žāsti (-džia), on the other, is further indicated by English touch: 1. “to cause or permit a part of the body to come in contact with so as to feel”; 13. “to injure or spoil slightly”; 16. “to draw with light strokes”; 17. “to change or improve by adding fine lines or strokes”; 18. “to strike or pluck the keys or strings of (a musical instrument)”; 19. “to play (a musical piece)”²⁰, which, as can be seen, supplies all the necessary meanings. Such is one possible semantic connection between the verbal lexemes žiėsti, žiesti and žeisti, žāisti, žāsti.

Further semantic components also appear in the verbs žaisti, žāsti: pra-žāisti (-džia) “to lose, mislay” Gižai, Keturvalakiai, Plateliai, Šateikiai; pra-žāsti (-džia) “same” Eigirdžiai, Žarenai; nu-žāisti (-džia) “to steal, throw away, lose” Truskava. The derived forms also have these meanings: pra-žāidyti (-do) “to lose, mislay” Alksnėnai, Barstyčiai, Griškabūdis, Kapsukas, Kartena, Kretinga, Kuliai, Mosėdis, Palanga, Pilviškiai, Plateliai, Plungė, Punskas, Salantai, Skuodas, Šakiai; pra-žāideiti (-ēja, -i) “same” Geistarai, Ylakiai; pra-žāidoti (-o, -oja) “same” Bagotoji, Kybartai, Pilviškiai, Varduva, Vilkaviškis. Used in prefixed forms, the meaning “to lose, mislay, throw away” is probably secondary, having developed from “to throw, hurl,” which is precisely the meaning of the form recorded by A. Juška: žaīdyti (-dau): Kam tu žaidai pinigus = you are throwing money away. That this meaning can also

¹⁸ B. Jēgers, KZ, 80, 1966, p. 88 tt.

¹⁹ A variant of the root under discussion, žaid-, seems also to underlie such lexemes in Samogitian dialects as žāima “jokes, prank,” žāimintis, žāimotis “to joke, behave unseriously, make a show,” žāimoti “to fiddle about, untangle” (from *žaīd-m-).

²⁰ William Morris, Editor, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Boston, New York, Atlanta, Geneva, Illinois, Dallas, Palo Alto, 1969, p. 1357.

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That they may be related to the meanings of the verbs žiesti and zlest is suggested, for example, by Lithuanian sviesti “to throw forcefully”: dialectal “to smear”; Latvian sviēst “to throw, hurl,” svaidīt “to throw repeatedly, fling, hurl, swing”: svādit “to anoint, smear”; Danish smide “to throw, cast, hurl”: “to smear, cast”; Old Frisian smita, Middle Low German smiten “to throw, cast, strike, hurl”: Gothic ga-smeitan, Old English smītan “to smear, cast.” It is quite possible that the meaning “to smear, cast” developed from the meaning “to throw, cast, hurl, i.e. to make something move rapidly”; compare Lithuanian sviesti (-džia) “to throw, fling; to smear,” Latvian sviēst (-žu) “to throw, hurl,” -tiês “to throw oneself”: “to start suddenly to run (in another direction) or to walk quickly”; Norwegian dialectal smita (smeit) “to smear,” “(reflexive) to slip, slide off”; Swedish smita “to slide, slip, escape, sneak,” alongside the already mentioned Gothic ga-smeitan, Middle Low German smiten, Old Frisian smita²¹.

Having proposed that the meaning “to smear, cast” may be related to, or even have arisen from, a meaning of movement, we must emphasize that, judging from the material in the LKŽ card index (s. v. žiesti), one component of the basic meaning of the verb žiesti, žiesti (-džia), “to turn, make from clay,” expresses the act of turning²². This is undoubtedly connected with the very process of making pots: pots were generally shaped on a potter’s wheel, turned by hand or foot²³ (its names kri̇jeliai, vytukai, skrituliai are themselves derived from verbs denoting turning: krėšti “to lay out, wind,” vyti “to wind, turn,” skriesti (-ia) “to draw, trace, make circular,” skri̇ešti (-čia) “to brush, draw; fly in a circle”).

With this in mind, we can turn our attention to žiedas “an ornament worn on the fingers; a sewing thimble” and examine its meanings. Such dialect meanings of žiedas as “a joint of rye” Zarasai and “the tub of a well’s lining” Kuršėnai suggest that žiedas denotes a round object with a hollow center and may once have meant “wheel” as well. The fact that the old meaning of žiedas could indeed have been “wheel” is suggested by the frequent use of a single word for both “(finger) ring” and “wheel, hoop”; compare Latvian gredzens “the ring; something ring-shaped, a circle; the wheel rim...”; Church Slavonic kolbce “ring” (Russian кольцо), Old Church Slavonic kolo, gen. kolese “wheel,” Prussian maluna-kelan “mill wheel”; German Reifen “wheel, hoop; (finger) ring”; German Ring “wheel; (finger) ring”; Old Icelandic hringr “wheel, hoop; ring”; Old Icelandic kringr “wheel; ring,” Norwegian and Swedish kring “wheel”; Latin ānulus “ring (especially one with a seal),” ānus “wheel, ring”; Latin circus “wheel, circle,” Greek χίρκος “ring.” The meaning “wheel, hoop” seems to have developed from the meaning “to turn”; compare Latvian ritenis, ritĩņš “the wheel of a cart; spinning wheel...”: rist “to roll; turn over,” Lithuanian rìsti “to push, move by rolling over a surface; roll,” riėsti “to bend, make an arc”; Old Church Slavonic kolo, gen. kolese “wheel,” Prussian maluna-kelan “mill wheel,” Greek πόλος “axis”: Greek πολέω “I circle,” πελομαι “I move” (from *kʷol-, *kʷel-); German Kreis “circle, wheel”: kreisen “to circle”; Old Icelandic hringr “wheel, hoop; ring”: Old Icelandic hringja “to turn around,” Old High German hringan “to turn”; Old Icelandic kringr “wheel; ring,” Norwegian and Swedish kring

²¹ A. Jóhannesson, Isländisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Bern, 1956, p. 906.

²² Tai ir atspindi „Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos žodynas“ (Vilnius, 1972): žiėsti (-džia) „sukti, daryti iš molio“ (p. 964).

²³ J. Kudirka, Lietuvos puodžiai ir puodai, Vilnius, 1973, p. 21 tt.

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“wheel”: Old Icelandic kringia “to make a circle, encircle,” Lithuanian gręžti; Old English trendel “wheel”; Old English trendan “to turn.”

The meaning “to turn,” as noted, is one of the most prominent components of the semantic content of the verb žiėsti. Thus, we arrive at the evidence for the kinship of žiėsti (žiesti) and žiėdas through two semantic transformations: “to turn (from clay)” → “wheel, arc” → “ring (for a finger).” With reference to the actual situational context, one should suppose that in the distant past the potter’s wheel itself was called žiėdas; in other words, the original meaning of the noun žiėdas was probably “potter’s wheel,” from which the meaning “an ornamental ring, worn or sewn on” later developed. This conclusion is indirectly supported by the corresponding Latvian lexemes, which lack meanings related to turning and, consequently, to a ring (worn or sewn on).

Since, as noted, the verb žiėsti, žiesti (-džia) is characterized by the meaning “to turn (oneself),” alongside which are the meanings “to slide, slip, escape, dart,” “to throw, hurl, fling,” it should now be emphasized that the meaning “to play; perform music” appears to have developed directly from “to dance, spin (in a circle), move quickly”; cf. Latvian ruõtāt “to be agile, turn, hop, fly back and forth, move playfully”; ruõtāties “to bustle about, play, hop and jump back and forth”; ruotināt(iês) “to play, bustle about”; Old Slavic igrati “to hop, dance; play”; English play “to play; gamble; perform (on a musical instrument); move quickly, lightly, irregularly” (cf. The breeze played on the water “a light breeze played over the water”); Icelandic leika “to play; move, turn” (cf. hjólid leikur á ási “the wheel turns on its axle”); Old English lācan “to move quickly, turn; play, perform music”; Gothic laikan “to dance, leap.” This may be another semantic connection between the verbs žiėsti, žiesti (-džia) and žaisti, žaisti (-džia).

Thus, diachronic analysis of word semantics makes it possible to trace the root žied- (Latvian zied-) back to ancient meanings associated with movement: “to turn (in a circle), move quickly; throw, fling,” “(to) slip, slide, escape,” from which, it seems, lexical meanings such as “to smear, mold, cast; pour, shape,” “to stroke (with the hand), caress, touch by stroking,” “to play; gamble; perform music; coire,” “to injure, wound,” and “wheel; a ring worn or sewn on” may eventually have developed.

The context in which A. Juška used the verb žaisti helps us penetrate more deeply into the mysteries of the semantics and history of words belonging to the root under investigation: Žaidre ugnis žaidžia gelžį. Here žaisti means “to heat, rozpalac.” In historically identifying žaisti (-džia) “to heat, rozpalac” and žaisti, žaisti (-džia) “to perform actions for amusement; perform music; gamble; coire,” one should first point out that the internal structures of A. Juška’s sentence cited above and the sentence known from Lazūnai, Žūsinas žūsi žaidžia, are identical. The conclusion that follows—that žaisti (-džia) “to heat, rozpalac” and žaisti, žaisti (-džia) “…perform music; gamble; coire” are etymologically one—can also be supported by certain semantic parallels: Latvian skudināties “to spin quickly in a circle”; “to shoot rapidly upwards (of a jet of flame)”; Icelandic leika “to play”: “to flame, move nimbly, waver (of a flame)”²⁴; Latvian kāitēt “to play, frolic; play a musical instrument,” -tiês “to play, flirt, tease, frolic”; kāitināt “to tease, taunt, provoke to anger by teasing, annoy, irritate,” -tiês “to tease one another, taunt,”

²⁴ Icelandic leika (lék) “to play, restrain (a flame), fence, play along with someone” – A. Jóhannesson, op. cit., p. 734.

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“to tease, taunt, provoke irritation, joke; play”: Latvian kàitêt “to burn, scorch,” Lithuanian kàitėti -(ėja) “to suffer from heat, become hot,” kaitinti “to heat,” Latvian kàist (-stu, -tu) “to become hot,” Lithuanian kaisti (-čia) “to put a pot on the fire to warm it,” (-sta) “to warm up, become hot.”

The Lithuanian data presented below show that lexemes of the root žied-(-žied) were formerly also used in contexts associated with heating, burning, or combustion. It should therefore also be noted that, from a diachronic perspective, the meaning “to injure” appears to be associated with semantic components denoting heating, burning, or combustion; cf. English burn “to cause to undergo combustion”: “(tr.) to damage or injure by fire, heat, or a heat-producing agent; (intr.) to be destroyed, injured, damaged, or changed by or as if by fire”²⁵; Old Indian tápati “to give out heat, be hot, shine (as the sun); to make hot or warm, heat, shine upon; to consume or destroy by heat”: “to cause pain to, injure, damage, spoil”²⁶; Latvian kàite “damage, fault, defect; suffering, affliction, illness,” kaitêt “to harm,” Lithuanian kàitėti “to matter, be lacking, be deficient, be wanting; obstruct, hinder, harm, be bad”: Latvian kàitêt “to burn, scorch,” Lithuanian kàitėti “to suffer from heat, become hot,” Latvian kàist “to become hot,” Lithuanian kaisti (-čia) “to put a pot on the fire to warm it,” (-sta) “to warm up, become hot.”

This may be a third semantic connection among the verbs žiešti, žiesti (-džia) and žaisti, žaisti (-džia) and žeisti (-džia). To substantiate this connection further, it should be noted that the semantic kinship of žaisti (-džia) “to heat, melt” and žiešti, žiesti (-džia) “to make, turn (from clay); pour, shape,” žièst (-žu) “to smear…” is evident both at the linguistic level—cf., for example, lièti “to make something from molten metal, wax, or another substance, shape; mold, cast”—and at the extralinguistic level: firing was an essential part of making pots²⁷. It is therefore entirely understandable that the root under consideration, žied-, has in Lithuanian a dozen or so lexemes with different root vowel grades, whose semantic content is in one way or another connected with various aspects of firing pots: žàidas “stove, hearth” Linkuva, Šatės, žaidis “same” J. Bretkūnas, žaizdė, žaizdė “hearth, stove; forge” Lazdijai, Užventis, Vidsodis, žaizdra “fireplace; fire; sparks” Biržai, Daugai, Lazdijai, Vadokliai, žaizdras “hearth; fireplace” (Aukštaitian dialects) [from * ža id-dr-], žiėzdras “forge” Dusetos, Pilviškiai, židinys, židinė, židynė “place where embers are raked; ash pit, fireplace”²⁸, prie-žda, prie-žda (<prie-žida), prie-židà Leliūnai, prie-židas Alanta, Labanoras, Skudutiškis, prie-žiedà Betygala, Juodaičiai, prie-žiedas Rimšė “the area in front of the opening of a baking oven.”

It is characteristic that it is precisely in this group of lexemes that the zero-grade variant of the root žid- appears; judging by the analogy of lexemes with the vowel u²⁹, this variant is probably primary, and so should be its meanings. The fact that the allomorph žid- is ancient is also suggested by its presence in Prussian: Prussian siduko “straining pot, Siebtopf,” which K. Būga connects with Lithuanian židuika, židui-

²⁵ William Morris, Ed., op. cit., p. 178.

²⁶ Monier Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary, Oxford, 1964, p. 436.

²⁷ J. Kudirka, op. cit., p. 29 tt., 59 tt.

²⁸ Plg. K. Būga, RR, I, p. 292, II, p. 208.

²⁹ LKK, XIV, 1973, p. 128 tt.

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kas “milk pot,” has quite justifiably assigned to the root under discussion³⁰. As regards their semantic aspect, it may be said that in certain cases the name of the pot derives from the name of the pottery kiln or hearth in which pots are fired; cf. Czech krb “fireplace”: Czech dialectal krbáň “old pot”; Old Church Slavonic gōrno “cauldron; furnace, hearth” (Russian горн “hearth”): Czech hrnec, Upper Sorbian horne, Lower Sorbian gjarňč, Serbo-Croatian grňe, Bulgarian гърне “pot” (from *gъrnъkъ, *gъrnъcъ); Gothic aúhns “furnace, oven”; Old Indic ukhā- “pot”³¹.

Since the meaning ‘pot’ in lexemes with the allomorph žid- appears to be secondary, the oldest meaning that can be reconstructed for the root žéid- / žid- is one associated with a furnace, hearth, fire, or, respectively, burning, shining, glowing, gleaming, and flickering (cf. degti “to burn, kindle; to shine, glow; to make a fire, set alight; to glow, gleam, glisten; to shine, etc.”). If so, Lithuanian žydėti (žydi, žydi) “to shine, gleam; to burn, glow” could also be assigned to this root (cf. Žydi žarijos — tai židinys Kruonis), Latvian zièdēt (praes. -du, -žu) “to be multicoloured, shimmer in many colours, shine; to dawn, break” ME IV 738, and Lithuanian žýdras “light blue.”

The meanings ‘to burn; to shine, glow, gleam, flicker’ and ‘to bloom’ may be related to one another; cf. dègti “...to bloom” (cf. This year there will be apples; the orchards bloomed profusely Tverečius, LKŽ II² 369); Czech kvetu, kvísti “to bloom”: “to gleam, shine, glitter, sparkle (of a starry sky)”; Old Church Slavonic cvětъ “flower,” pro-cvęta, -cvisti “to blossom”: Latvian kviēt “to shine, flicker,” kvitināt “to cause to flicker or shine,” kvietināt “to make glow, kindle, set ablaze”; Greek ἄνθος “shoot; flower; blooming”: “gleam, shine, radiance, flash.” The meaning ‘to grow mouldy, go stale, become flowered (of bread)’ apparently belongs to this group of related meanings as well; cf. Belarusian цвісці, цвіту́ “to bloom”: “to grow mouldy”; Ukrainian цвісти, цвіту “to bloom”: “to grow mouldy”; Russian цвести “to put forth buds, produce a flower, become covered in flowers”: “to become covered in mould, grow mouldy, turn green with rot” Даль² IV 572. The meaning ‘to menstruate; menstruation’ also appears to belong to this group; cf. Polish kwiat “flower, blossom”: kwiaty “menstruation”; Czech květ “flower, blossom”: dialectal květ “menstruation”; Old Russian cvěto “flower, blossom”: cvětьno “menstruation”; German Blume “flower, blossom”: die Blumen “menstruation.”

Thus, it is quite possible that the Lithuanian and Latvian lexemes denoting blooming and related meanings also represent the root *žéid- / *žid- “to burn; to shine, glow, gleam, flicker”: žiėsti (-džia) “to bloom,” sa-ziėst “to blossom, bloom,” žiėdyti (žiėdžiu; be k.) “to cultivate,” žiėdėti, žiedėti (-id, žiedi, žiedi, žiesti, žiesta) “to grow mouldy; to go stale, harden,” ziėdēt (-žu, -du) “to bloom, put forth blossoms; to grow mouldy,” ziėda “hardened soil,” ziėdas “flower, blossom; flowering; menstruation,” ziėds the blossom, flower; the bloom, flowering season; first fruits, earliest produce; a gift, a present (of fruit); mould; a kind of rash on the skin; women’s menses (zied)...”, žeidas, žaidas “flower,” žýsti (-sta) “to begin to bloom, to blossom—

³⁰ K. Būga, RR, I, p. 493, II, pp. 208–9 [see also here concerning the suffix -uika(s)]. — E. Fraenkel (LEW 1305) is inclined to include Latvian žīdīņš, žīdīņš “small pot, small cauldron” here as well. However, judging by their meaning, cf. židīņš “a small pot; a small cauldron of the kind carried by itinerant Jewish peddlers” ME IV 809, they are more likely derived from a loanword (cf. žìds, žìds “the Jew,” from Slavic židъ “judaeus”), all the more so since Latvian has no attested zero-grade allomorph meaning “to burn, etc.” (see below).

³¹ O. H. Трубачев, op. cit., p. 192, 197, 203.

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to grow mouldy,” žydėti (žydi, žydi, žydžia, žýsti, žýsta) “to be in flower; to grow mouldy, turn green; to be marked with white spots; to menstruate.”

It should also be noted here that Lithuanian žiedėti, žiedėti “to grow mouldy; to go stale, harden” may, on the one hand, as mentioned, be related to lexemes with the meanings ‘to bloom’ and ‘flower’, but, on the other, it is also used in contexts whose semantic aspect would hardly be satisfactorily explained solely by reference to the aforementioned range of meanings. These contexts are the following sentences recorded by A. Juška and J. Jablonskis: The earth has hardened = compacted, hardened J; As the shifting sands harden and set (= harden) and grow green, it will be a good meadow J; Ancient masonry, having hardened, is difficult to demolish (J. Jablonskis, from Pušalotas)³². Thus, in these contexts, which concern soil, sand, and masonry, the verb žiedėti comes very close to the verb žįsti, žiesti both in usage and meaning; as already noted, the latter denotes making and shaping pottery from clay. We may therefore suppose that žiesti, a verb of action, has the stative verb žiedėti as its counterpart; for this kind of morphological relationship, cf. giėžti (-žia) “to eat, gnaw, tickle (in the throat); to suffer heartburn”: iš-giėžėti “to ferment, turn sour”; gniėžti (-ia) “to greatly desire, be eager for”: gniežėti “to itch, feel a strong desire”; kliesti (-džia) “to rave, talk deliriously”: kliedėti, kliedėti (kliedi, klieda) “to speak nonsensical, incoherent words while unconscious; to talk in one’s sleep; to rave, talk deliriously”; viežtis (-iasi) “to endure, put up with; to dare, have the courage or desire”: nusi-, užsi-viežėti (-ia, -ėja) “to put up with”; zniebti (-ia) “to spin thin, make (thread) thinner”: zniebėti (-ėja) “to spin thin.”

In addition, žiedėti may also be historically related to lexemes denoting burning, glowing, and shining, since the sememe ‘hard; to harden’ seems to have arisen from ‘to burn, become hot’ (i.e., ‘to dry, become parched’); cf. Greek σκληρός “dry, hard”; σκέλλω “I dry” (intransitive aorist ἔσκλην, perfect ἔσκληγκα); Old Church Slavonic žestъ “hard” (cf. Russian dialectal жеге for жестче “harder”): Old Church Slavonic žega, žesti “to burn”³³; Lithuanian kietas, Latvian ciēts “hard; firm”: kaisti (-čia) “to put a pot on the fire to heat it,” (-sta) “to warm up, become hot…”; Latvian kaist (-stu) “to become hot”³⁴.

For the Baltic root *žeid- / *žid- (or *zeid- / *zid-), we thus reconstruct, on the one hand, the oldest meaning ‘to burn; to shine, glow, gleam, flicker’ (hence ‘to harden, become encrusted; hard’ and ‘to bloom; flower’) and, on the other, the meaning ‘to turn (in a circle), move rapidly; to throw, cast’. As the linguistic evidence considered³⁵ shows, the coexistence of these meanings in the same or related words is not uncommon in Indo-European languages. The semantic relationships therefore seem to permit treating all the lexemes mentioned here as representatives of a single root. The final consonant -d- of the root *žeid- / *žid- (or *zeid / *zid-) was probably once a formant. The primary root *žei- / *ži- (or *zei- / *zi-) ‘to burn; to shine, glow, gleam, flicker // to turn (in a circle), move rapidly; to throw, cast’, expanded by the formants -b-, -g-, -ž-, is also found in lexemes such as žiebti (-ia).

³² LKŽ card index, s.v. žiedėti.

³³ F. Miklosich, Etymologisches Wörterbuch der slavischen Sprachen, Wien, 1886, p. 410. Китаип М. Фасмер, Этимологический словарь русского языка, II, М., 1967, p. 50.

³⁴ But cf. E. Fraenkel, LEW, p. 252. — In that case, perhaps the historical relationship of Germanic *harduz (IE *kortu-) “hard” (German hart, English hard, etc.) to Germanic *herthō (IE *kertā) “hearth” (German Herd, English hearth) should also be considered.

³⁵ V. Urbutis, Baltistica, VIII, 1972, p. 129.

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“to burn, kindle; to go, travel fast; to strike, beat,” žiebas, žéibas, žáibas “lightning,” žėibti (-sta), žaibti (-sta) “to become variegated,” žibėti (žiba) “to shine, gleam, glitter,” Latvian zibēt (-u, -ēju) “to flash, shimmer, gleam”; pér-žiegti (-ia) “to rekindle (a stove),” žigalioti “to walk, march,” žiglus “lively, nimble; quick,” pa-žygėti (-žygi, -ėja) “to advance a little,” Latvian zaiguot “to shine, appear, shimmer, flicker”; Lithuanian žiežti (-žia) “to burn brightly with a flame blown from within; to rake (embers),” žaižara “the redness of the sky” (from which žaižaruoti “to glow, shine, gleam”), už-žizti (-žiža) “to flare up in anger suddenly” (for the meaning, cf. užsi-degti “to become very angry”), žižė “fire (in children’s speech); light, lamp (in children’s speech); ember, spark.” The unresolved primary root *žei- / *ži- (resp. *zei- / *zi-) may also underlie Latvian zīt “to become visible” (cf. maza dieniņa jau zistas “day is dawning” EH II 810), ziet (ies), praes. zeju(os) “to blossom, come into view” ME IV 744 (if this is indeed a genuine Latvian word). Among other Indo-European languages, the following may belong here: Gothic us-kijans “sprouted,” and, with the suffix -n-, Gothic keinan, us-keinan, Old High German chinan “to sprout,” Old English cīnan “to burst, put forth buds,” Old Icelandic kīn “shoot,” as well as the Baltic lexemes with a dental suffix: Old English cīd, Old Saxon kīd, Old High German (frumi) kīdi “shoot, growth,” Middle High German kīde, kīt “shoot, growth, offshoot,” etc. (root *gei- / *gi- “to sprout, burst, blossom”); semantically cf. Latvian kvietēt “to make (grain) germinate,” kvietināt “to cause to germinate”: kvietēt “to bleach,” kvietināt “to make glow, fan, inflame,” kvitēt “to gleam, flicker,” kvitināt “to make or cause to flicker, gleam.”

Having concluded that žiesti, ziest, like žiebti, žėlbti, pér-žiegti, žiežti and the other lexemes listed here, most probably belong to the root *žei- *ži- (resp. *zei / *zi-) “to burn; to radiate, shine, gleam, flicker || to turn (in a circle), move quickly; to throw, cast,” the traditional explanation of the origin of žiėsti, ziest falls away: according to it, the Balto-Slavic root *gheidh- arose by metathesis from the Indo-European root *dheigh-, and its cognates in other Indo-European languages are Gothic digan “to tread (clay), mould, plaster,” Latin fingō “to make something from a soft material, mould; to touch by stroking or brushing,” Greek ῥιγγάω “to touch,” τεῖχος “wall; fortress,” τοῖχος “house wall,” Old Indic déhmi “I smear, anoint,” Armenian dizanem “I add, heap up,” Tocharian A tsek, B tsaik- “to make, form, create.” In that case, possible candidates for kinship with these Indo-European lexemes may include (cf. perhaps Latvian dviezt, -žu, -zu “to smear, daub” ME I 538) Lithuanian diežti (-žia) “to beat, thrash” LKŽ II² 523, Latvian diezēt “to offer, foist (a commodity) on someone” ME I 487, Lithuanian deizti (-ia) “to keep insistently asking” LKŽ II² 380, dýžti (-ia) “to strip, peel; tear, wear, use; beat, thrash, whip; go, pull, travel quickly and forcefully; (refl.) worry, grieve; (refl.) intend, prepare, get ready, etc.” ib. 598.

Lithuanian žiėsti (-džia) and Latvian ziest (-žu, -du) have, as is well known, exact lexical counterparts in the Slavic languages. Polish zdun “potter” (from Slavic *zbdunъ) indicates,

36 Trübners Deutsches Wörterbuch, IV Band, 1943, p. 123.

37 For Lithuanian, see E. Fraenkel, LEW, p. 1307. — More recently: A. Vaillant, Grammaire comparée des langues slaves, vol. III, Le verbe, Paris, 1966, p. 314: “Le thème balto-slave *žeid- résulte d’une métathèse de *deiž-, et la racine est i.-e. *dheigh-...“. O. H. Трубачев, op. cit., p. 209: “И балтийский и славянский обнаруживают здесь метатезу согласных первоначального и.-е. *dheigh-...“.

38 Cf. K. Būga, RR, I, p. 306; J. Endzelīns, ME, I, p. 478; E. Fraenkel, LEW, p. 98.

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that the Slavic verb of the root under discussion, *zbdati, *zidati (cf. Old Church Slavonic žizdę, zbdati “to build, construct, make,” Bulgarian zždam “to build,” Serbo-Croatian zždam, zždamu “to build (from stones),” Slovenian zidati “to build (a wall)”), formerly also belonged to pottery terminology, although its meaning, as can be seen, has become so generalized that it is now impossible to say which stage in the pot-making process—moulding, wheel-throwing, or firing—the verb denoted.

The semantics have changed in a similar way in the Prussian lexemes. Prussian seydis “wall, Wand” corresponds exactly, in both meaning and form (from Baltic *zeidas), to the South Slavic lexemes Bulgarian zид “wall,” Serbo-Croatian zид “stone wall,” and Slovenian zid “wall.” We cannot now know for certain from what meaning-bearing verb these Prussian and South Slavic nouns were derived—perhaps from a verb meaning “to build, construct, make.” Be that as it may, on the basis of the hypothesis developed here, we may nevertheless suppose that the Lithuanian counterpart of the Prussian and South Slavic nouns just mentioned is žiedas “a ring worn on a finger,” whose meaning, as argued here, developed from “circle, hoop” (a wall can also take the shape of a circle or hoop, i.e. a ring, for example a city wall).

On the other hand, as already noted, Prussian also has a lexeme with the zero grade of the root-vowel alternation, siduko “a pot used for straining, Siebtopf,” perhaps reflecting the firing of pots (the meaning “pot” can sometimes develop from “kiln, furnace”), especially since in Lithuanian lexemes with the allomorph žid- (cf. *žid-) already directly convey various aspects of pot firing.

Moving across the territory of the Baltic and Slavic languages from north to south, one can observe the gradual reduction and abstraction of the semantic chain “to smear, plaster, mould” — “to turn (in a circle); throw; move quickly” — “to burn; hearth, furnace” — “to radiate, shine, gleam, flicker; blossom; ring,” which reflects the technological processes of ancient pottery (moulding—wheel-throwing—firing): in the case of the root under discussion, the Slavic and, it seems, Prussian languages passed long ago through the stages of semantic development that Lithuanian is undergoing now. Cf. Slavic *zbdati, *zidati “to build, brick up (walls, houses from stones or clay)” and Lithuanian žiešti (-džia) “to turn, make from clay” → “to make something (neatly, beautifully) (clogs, spoons, ladles, sledges, carts, houses).” Characteristically, Latvian, in which “to smear, plaster” — “to shine, radiate, gleam, flicker; dawn, grow light; blossom” is attested⁳⁹, aligns in our case with the southern area, that is, with Prussian and Slavic, while at the same time extending the northern area, that is, Lithuanian.

The semantic chain mentioned above has been best preserved in Lithuanian lexemes, but semantic changes have also occurred here. The meanings “to turn (from clay)” and “(potter’s) wheel, hoop” (later “a ring worn or sewn”) are in Lithuanian

³⁹ Given this Latvian semantic correlation and the reduction of the semantic chain mentioned above, it is entirely possible that, for example, the cognates in other Indo-European languages of Lithuanian tepti (tėpa), Latvian tept (-pju) “to smear, coat” include not only Old Church Slavonic tepa, tepti “to beat, strike, give,” but also Old Indic tápati “heats, burns; torments,” Latin tepeō “I am warm, lukewarm,” and, correspondingly, Lithuanian lipti (limpa) “to stick, adhere to something” (cf. lipýti (lipo, lipia), “to mould, glue; to make something from soft material”), Latvian lipt (līptu, -u) “to stick, remain stuck,” Latvian lipt (lipu) “to gleam, flicker; kindle” (cf. Latvian lipit, -iju “to kindle, set alight,” lipēt -u, -ēju “to flicker, shimmer,” Lithuanian liepsna “flame”).

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innovations that formed on the basis of older semantic segments (e.g., ‘to move quickly, turn (in a circle); to throw’). It should be assumed that these meanings and the words denoting them arose on Lithuanian soil, i.e., at a time when Lithuanian had already separated from Latvian (approximately from the mid-7th century). This is consistent with archaeologists’ conclusion that the potter’s wheel appeared in the territory of Lithuania around the 10th century.⁴⁰

С. КАРАЛЮНАС

FROM THE HISTORY OF POTTERY TERMS IN THE BALTIC LANGUAGES

Abstract

An attempt is made to identify the internal lexical relationships among Lithuanian pūodas, Latvian pūods ‘pot’, Lithuanian žiēsti (-džia) ‘to make from clay’, and Latvian ziest (-žu) ‘to smear (over)’, which are fundamental concepts in Baltic pottery terminology. It is assumed that the following lexemes are related to pūodas, pūods: Lithuanian dialectal pūdūnė ‘a certain kind of pot, milk jug’, Latvian pūdele ‘box’, pūdenis ‘place for chaff’, pūtis ‘heap, pile’, pudas ‘junk, belongings, rag, patch’, Lithuanian pūdūlas ‘bundle, knot, lump’, Latvian pudra, pudrs ‘heap, pile’, pudurs, puduris ‘bunch, tuft, bush with roots; heap, pile; mound, barrow’, Lithuanian puduras ‘a dense stand of trees, bushes, or crops’, pudēnti ‘to tug, tease, loosen’, pūdułioti pūdułiuoti ‘to knead, tease, ruffle, tousle, tangle’, and others. These lexemes apparently correspond to the Indo-European root *peu- / *pou- / *pū- ‘to blow, waft; to swell, inflate, puff up’, and the ancient form of the root for pūodas, pūods may therefore have been *pūid-, later changing to *pōd-.

A new etymology is proposed for the lexemes žiēsti, zest on the grounds that the following lexemes belong to this same root: Lithuanian žeisti (-džia) ‘to wound’, žaisti (-džia) ‘to play; romp, amuse oneself’, pra-žaisti (-džia) ‘to lose, pawn, put up somewhere’, žiedas ‘ring’, žiedėti (-i, -ėja) ‘to become moldy’, žaidas, žaidras, žieždras ‘forge’, židinys ‘hearth, fireplace’, žydėti (žydi, žydi) ‘to gleam, shine, sparkle, glitter, burn’, ‘to bloom’, Latvian ziēdēt (-du, -žu) ‘to sparkle, gleam, shine, shine brightly; to dawn’, ‘to bloom, become moldy’, Lithuanian žiedas, žėidas, žaidas ‘flower’, and others. Parallels from other Indo-European languages and references to relevant facts from the history of material culture allow us to hypothesize a semantic relationship among these lexemes.

⁴⁰I. Mulevičienė, On the question of the appearance of the potter’s wheel in the territory of Lithuania, MAD, Series A, 2(36), 1971, pp. 111 ff.