Re: etymological insanity

Adam Walker wrote:
> But now I've come up with a word I have no
> recollection of coining -- chirgada.  It means
> "checkers", as in the game.  But I have no idea where
> this word came form.  I've checked my note book on
> games which shows all the Romlangs having some variant
> of "dama".  I've checked all my Arabic dictionaries
> and none of them even *have* checkers so it couldn't
> be that.
Hmm, it doesn't sound Arabic, but in case your dictionaries were publ. in
England, did you try  "draughts"?  IIRC there are other names for the game
as well.

> I have temporarily removed _chirgada_ from the
> dictionary and replaced it with _dama_ borrowed from
> Italian.
Why? It's perfectly natural to have quite common words of unknown etymology,
or, my favorite abbreviation, "o.o.o." of obscure origin.

>  Any ideas what I was thinking when I coined
> _chirgada_?
>
Perhaps it's just a deformation of the word "checker" plus a "participial"
ending?  Anyhow, _I_ like the word and with your permission will ste...adapt
it for Kash :-) -- cikrata [tSi'krata] 'game similar to checkers',  o.o.o.,
but perhaps cikra originally referred to any cross-hatched pattern. (Or does
C-a "ch" represent /S/?)  Many cultures seem to have such a game.

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