> Not sure it's as peacefully economic as all that. Going to my Pokorny
> (on which the AHD is based), I find for dap- first the ai. dapayati,
> "shares", "splits", which gives Greek word for "tear apart, sever,
> slice into pieces" (as with meat), and with doubling of syllable as
> intensifier an even stronger sense of ripping apart. From where,
> variations go on to food-serving, (over)laden tables, wastefulness,
> prodigality, then it gives the words for sacrificial meal & amimal,
> and then Jon's "damnum". So apportionment within equal exchange may
> only be one possible reading -- my own sense wld move it more toward
> excessive sharing, feasting, even something like the potlach (if
> IndoEuris can be said to have something of that order) in all of
> which the poet will have taken part, singing it it & eating it ‹
> maybe a more democratic participation than in the patron exchange?
Pierre, your description here makes me think of - in reference to a great
meal, great sex, great poem, etc - when we impulsively says, either loudly
or beneath the little over breath, almost in surprise, "That was damn good!"
, or "Real damn good. The best."
Stephen V
Or
> are these just my anarchistic preferences speaking through the gaps
> of our etymological ventures?
>
> Pierre
>
> On Nov 8, 2006, at 10:46 AM, Jon Corelis wrote:
>
>> Derivatives of the root dap- (which yields such English words as
>> damage and damn) furnish a useful window on the nature of reciprocal
>> exchange relationships, which were central to the ancient
>> Indo-European peoples. In their societies, and in Proto-Indo-European
>> society itself, a gift entailed the payment of recompense. The root
>> dap- embodies the notion of apportionment in reciprocal exchange
>> relationships of either sort. In Latin, the word damnum, from a
>> suffixed form *dap-no-, meant "damage entailing liability." Its Old
>> Norse cognate duan (also from *dap-no-), however, meant "poem." How
>> the same Indo-European form can can come to mean "damage entailing
>> liability" in one language and "poem" in another makes perfect sense
>> in light of the relationship obtaining between the Indo-European poet
>> and his patron (typically a king): the poet sang the patron's fame,
>> and in return the patron bestowed largesse on the poet. The
>> relationship was vital to both parties: the king's livelihood
>> depended on the poet's singing his praises (in Ireland, for example, a
>> "king without poets" was proverbial for "nothing"), and the poet lived
>> off the largess bestowed by the king. The poem therefore was a
>> vehicle of this reciprocal exchange relationship; it was a gift
>> entailing a countergift just as surely as damages entail reparation.
>>
>> Calvert Watkins, The
>> American Heritage Dictionary
>> of
>> Indo-European Roots
>> --
>> ===================================
>>
>> Jon Corelis www.geocities.com/jgcorelis/
>>
>> ===================================
>
>
>
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