Linguistic Society of America

Latin tepidus, Spanish-Portuguese tibio

Author(s): Roland G. Kent
Source: Language, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Apr. - Jun., 1937), pp. 145-146
Published by: Linguistic Society of America
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/408721
Accessed: 02-04-2017 05:24 UTC

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 MISCELLANEA 145

Semitische ganze Wortgruppen

dann die Wurzel zkr 'zeugen') a
miissen Zusammenhange vorliegen
Nehmen Beispiel wir als letztes
sumerisches Lehnwort. Die Farb
der Ausgangspunkt fUir diese W
straktionen diirfen wir ffir di
gehen auf konkrete Gegenstin
besonders auffiillt; so akk.ell 'w
'Schattenrii3' (palm), uqnt2 'b
diirfte yarq 'griin' auf das 'Griin
Nomaden am unentbehrlichst
hier abbrechen.
Der Zweck dieses Aufsatzes war es zu zeigen, wie man vorgehen muf3,
um in der Wortforschung zu Zielen zu gelangen. Es geht nicht ohne
ausgiebige kulturgeschichtlichtliche Ueberlegungen.
A. UNGNAD

LATIN tepidus, SPANISH-PORTUGUESE tibio

The Latin adjective tepidus 'lukewarm' survives into Romanic (with
the exception of Roumanian), in forms which, whether partly or wholly
learned, or purely popular, for the most part reflect the open e (Latin
9) of the initial syllable. Thus we have French tidde, Prov. teve, Ital.
tiepido and tepido.1 But Spanish and Portuguese have tibio2 ('luke-
warm, careless, remiss', in both languages), the vowel of which is the
regular development of an original i, or of an or ? before i of the next
syllable. The irregularity has been noticed and commented upon.
Jules Cornu, in Die Portugiesische Sprache ?7,1 asserts that even the
open e' became i if the i-sound of the next syllable was retained in pro-
nunciation; and this view is repeated by J. J. Nunes, Compendio de
Gram6tica Portuguesa 157 (2nd ed., 1930). Fr. Hanssen, in his
Spanische Grammatik ?11.1 (1910), makes the process somewhat more
credible by assuming that the open e became close in imitation of the
derivatives tibieza (Sp. 'lukewarmness', Port. 'nonchalance', from
6 Niheres an anderer Stelle.
1 Other dialectal forms and derivatives may be found in the etymological
dictionaries.
2 Also Port. (archaic) tibo; but Mod. Port. tOpido is learned.
* In Grober's Grundriss d. rom. Phil. I= (1904-6); a rather similar view is given
by E. H. Tuttle, Mod. Phil. 11. 348 (Jan. 1914).

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 146 MISCELLANEA

*tepiditia) and entibiar (Sp. 'to

discourage', from *in-tepiddre)
cause it was unaccented, being pr
The influence of these derivat
rendered unlikely because of tw
entibiar are much rarer than tib
derivatives not truly unaccente
which comes at the interval of
(in some forms of entibiar the
A more convincing explanation
that in the Hispanic peninsul
*tipidu by association with (the
'cold', which belongs to the sa
difficulty with the development.
This association is rendered mor
this territory and only in this
shown by Old Sp. frido, Sp. Por
the basic form for the later wo
vowel has been assimilated to tha
freezing cold stiffens all things
Ital. (of Siena) reddo, Prov. rege
are:

Ital., Prov., Fr.: *t'pidu, but *frig(i)du, *rig(i)du.

Span., Port.: *tipidu, *frig(i)du; but *rtg(i)du.5
ROLAND G. KENT

CATALAN migrar-se 'TO BE BORED'

C. C. Rice, LANGUAGE, 11.239, is right in his opposition, backed by

REW3, s.v. migrare, to a juvenile suggestion of mine (1913) which put
the equation: Catal. migrar-se = Lat. migrare 'to migrate'. But his
suggestion: migrar-se, a back-formation from migranya 'headache',
seems to me erroneous. Firstly, the connection between campagne
and camper, montagne and monter seems to me a rather loose one in the
minds of the speakers of modern Romance languages, so that a back-

4References for this and other views are given in W. Meyer-Liibke, Rom. etym.
Wartb., s.v. frigidus.
6 In the Hispanic peninsula rigidus left few continuants, apart from learned
words. Port. rijo 'harsh, rigid', is regular; it has an abstract derivative, rijeza.
Sp. recio 'strong, vigorous, hard, heavy' is irregular both in its e and in its c, and
has been taken as a back-formation from arrecir-se 'to become stiff and swollen
from cold', which developed regularly from ad + rig8scere; cf. Meyer-Liibke,
LEW', No. 7312a (who cites Galician arrecerse and not Castilian arrecirse).

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