Having problems with message search?
----- Original Message -----
From: markodegard@...
To: cybalist@eGroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, October 27, 1999 3:00 AM
Subject: [cybalist] Cowpokes and Centaurs.
Are there IE cognates for this usage of *kent? Have I ignorantly stumbled on not merely a Greek word for cowboy, but the PIE term for cowboy? As for *kente:to:r, if it means 'goader of cattle' (in Greek, I presume -- or is this PIE?), it is ever so easy, at least in English, to see how it can be seen as a portmanteau that gives us 'centaur'; the association with bulls is natural -- and it's bulls that need to be goaded the most.
Dear Mark,
The term as it stands cannot be PIE. This verb-noun type of compound (like English pickpocket) is not without precedent in Greek but would not have been permissible in PIE. If there was indeed a proto-word for 'cowboy' analogous to cowpoke or cowpuncher, it should have had the same structure as in English: a 'bovine' root plus an agent noun derived from a verb like *kent-. Sure enough, Greek has such compounds (is there a thing Greek wouldn't have?). One of them is ... guess what: taurokentai (pl.) 'bull-stabbers = toreadors', Latinized to taurocentae. Don't ask me why nobody has ever connected this with the Kentauroi -- I've no idea. Another attested one is boukente:s 'cattle driver'. This is precisely what I'd expect for PIE -- something like *gwou-kenta:x, if *kent- is old enough (the most archaic 'animal-driving' root seems to be *xag-, usually glossed as 'drive, lead', but originally a herding term; it's possible, however, that it had more to do with driving flocks of sheep or goats rather than herds of cattle; perhaps it's older than the domestication of Bos primigenius). Another Greek word you might like to know is boukentron 'ox-goad'. All these terms are semantically transparent and structurally regular compounds, which makes them impossible to date on the Greek evidence alone: anybody could have coined them at any time. Still, if you want to continue your quest for PIE cowboys, you should try to identify traces of such terms in various IE languages, preferably as obscured compounds.
I've been thinking of possible reflexes of *kent-/*kont-/*k@nt-. Latin has contus 'barge-pole, pike' < *kontos (an expected derivative). Germanic *xanduz 'hand' (with *d from Verner's Law) looks attractive but is a bit on the loose side semantically. Hey, anybody ... Other cognates?
Piotr
Send Email