[Spellyans] bone-marrow

[nicholas williams]

Nance's mer is based on Welsh mêr 'marrow, fat', which is probably the  
same word as Irish smior 'marrow'.
Lhuyd's maru on the other hand looks like a borrowing from Middle  
English marow.
In which case marow is the attested word and mer is a neologism. They  
are different words, however.
Breton mel 'marrow' seems to be a borrowing of French moelle < Latin  
medulla.

Nicholas

On 5 Gen 2010, at 13:00, j.mills at email.com wrote:

> Morton Nance (1938) gives "mer" for English 'bone-marrow', and marks  
> it with an asterisk to indicate a neologism. Lhuyd (1707: 15b, 87c)  
> gives "marụ". Is there any justification for retaining the form  
> "mer"? I am aware of the Welsh "mêr" (bone-marrow), which was  
> possibly the basis for Nance's neologism.
> Jon
>
> _____________________________________
> Dr. Jon Mills,
> School of European Culture and Languages,
> University of Kent
>
> _______________________________________________
> Spellyans mailing list
> Spellyans at kernowek.net
> http://kernowek.net/mailman/listinfo/spellyans_kernowek.net

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://kernowek.net/pipermail/spellyans_kernowek.net/attachments/20100105/6950f0ef/attachment.html>