Re: USAGE: Butterfly (was: Reduplication enquiry)

Dirk Elzinga scripsit:

> >Do any of these have transparent etymologies, or are they also quasi
> >ideophones?
[etymologies snipped]

Here are a couple of interesting web pages (as usual, take the information with a
grain of salt):

http://www.aworldforbutterflies.com/etymology.htm
http://www.bugbios.com/ced4/etymology.html

Striking on the first list, which is longer but with fewer details, is the
imitative/ideophone/reduplicative nature of many entries, the very different
forms used in related languages, and the prevalence of borrowing (French keeps the
inherited Latin form, but Italian "farfalla" looks suspiciously like the
"fif(r)ald-" forms from OE and ON, now preserved only in Icelandic).

--
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