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On the Etymology of Gothic Alew

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 April 2019

Giuseppe Pagliarulo
Giuseppe Pagliarulo*
Affiliation:
Università degli Studi di Torino
*
Università degli Studi di Torino, Dipartimento di Lingue e Letterature straniere e Culture Moderne, Via Verdi 10, 10124, Torino, Italy [[email protected]]
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Abstract

Gothic alew ‘oil’ is ultimately derived from Latin oleum. Its phonological features, however, seem hardly reconcilable with those of the Latin word. This has prompted scholars to postulate that the Latin word was not borrowed directly into Gothic but rather via a third language: continental Celtic, Illyrian or Raetic. This article examines the weaknesses of these theories and proposes that the unexpected features of the Gothic item may be explained in terms of proper Gothic or Latin developments, making direct derivation of alew from oleum the most plausible and parsimonious hypothesis.

Keywords

language contactGothic etymologyGermanic-Roman tradeLatin loanwords in GothicGothic phonology
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Germanic Linguistics , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , June 2019 , pp. 201 - 212
Copyright
© Society for Germanic Linguistics 2019 

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