Gesserit [was: RE: Dune Conlang]

Lars Henrik Mathiesen <thorinn@...> wrote:
> FFlores wrote:
> > How do you break _gesserit_ down? It looks absolutely non-Latin to me!
> > (Plus, how do you *pronounce* it?)
>   gero (1) gerere gessi gestum. Lit. (1) [to carry , bear]; esp. [to
>   wear]. (2) [to bear, give birth to]. Transf., [to carry about,
>   display an appearance]; 'personam gerere', [to act a part]; 'se
>   gerere', [to conduct oneself (with adv.); to carry about, entertain
>   a feeling; to carry on, conduct, manage business]; 'res gestae',
>   [exploits, esp. warlike exploits].
Oh! I'd never imagined such amount of irregularity. But it turns
out that *this* must be the root of Spanish _gerente_ 'manager'
(as in a company's department). The semantics are strange, but
it seems to fit after you imagine a lot of meaning shifts...
_Gerente_ is practically a 'semantic isolate' (?); the root
is not used in Spanish, AFAIK, in any other word (well, there's
the verb _gerenciar_, of direct Latin origin, or maybe analogical),
and the name for the charge and the activity, _gerencia_.


--Pablo Flores
  http://draseleq.conlang.org/pablo-david/