Re: Greekisms in Spanish

Pablo Flores wrote:
>The problem was:
>
>_facies_ "face"
>_fascis_ "a lot of plant stems tied together" (what's the English
word?)

I think the word you're looking for is "sheaf".

>
>When the last sounds were simplified we got "faz" for both words,
>and if things had been let to follow this course, they would have
>become "haz" and then "az", this last word in turn becoming identical
>to "az" < "acies" ("vanguard, front line"). So "acies" disappeared;
>"haz" was only used for _fascis_, and "faz" was frozen, its place
>taken by the Greek loan "cara". Today, "faz" means "face" but only
>in poetic writing and a fixed phrase "la faz de la tierra" = "the
>face of the earth"; and "haz" /as/ means "beam/set of beams" (as in
>"haz de luz" = "beam of light").
A sheaf of light?  I like that image.

Adam Walker

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