aeb@mcvax.UUCP (Andries Brouwer) (06/17/85)
In article <6460@boring.UUCP> steven@boring.UUCP (Steven Pemberton) writes: (I said about chicken that the -en was a diminutive suffix and pointed out a parallel in Dutch veulen (foal), and continued: ) >> It may be that an English example is found in sow/swine. >Probably not, for as Lambert Meertens pointed out to me, then you're stuck >with explaining the relationship of sow/swine with Dutch zeug/zwijn. >The OED suggests a suffix -ino- here. > But this means that the OED agrees with me. You see, the root is clearly *su- (*suw-) as in Latin sus, Greek hus, German Sau, Danish so. (Hyaina is from this same root.) With a -k- suffix we have Latin sucula 'piglet', Sanskrit sukara 'boar', Dutch zeug, English sow (Old English sugu). (The verb to soil is from this same root.) With the adjectival -ino- suffix we have Latin suinus 'of the pig', Lett. svins 'filthy'. In the germanic languages this suffix becomes -en/-in and is used to create nouns: Dutch zwijn, English swine, Danish svin, German Schwein.