Re: OT: French/English etymology question: "sauf"/"save"

Christophe wrote:


En réponse à Roger Mills :
>IMO the non-correspondence of the vowels [-al- ~ aw] vs. [a:]? modern [ej]
>is odd, however. But maybe not--- cf. OF palme :: Eng. palm usually
>pronounced without /l/ [pA:m] ????  (The Engl. |l| may even be an early
>spelling hypercorrection?? The Fr. word also appears to be "learned" since
>it lacks the l-vocalization in modern Fr.)
Not really. The outcome of "palme" is "paume". "palme" in Modern French is
indeed a learned borrowing referring only to the tree. For the hand's
anatomy,  the correct word is "paume".

Yes, I was thinking the tree, of the "Palme d'or" of Cannes fame.

I knew the word "paume" existed but was unsure of its meaning-- there used
to be a museum in Paris devoted to the Impressionists, called the "Jeu de
Paume"-- I believe the collection is housed elsewhere now and the museum as
such no longer exists. It was an old royal building IIRC and "paume" was
supposed to mean "pawn" (the chess piece).....perhaps it was where Marie
Antoinette played chess when she wasn't pretending to be a milk-maid---
çehambi, payi kukusap çakoni yu!!!  :-))

Replies