Miz Helen Ledasdottir complains:
Now lakh might well mean thousands... but to salmon and pink? Or to lox... show me how! Really-- if its true, i want to hear the story of the connection.AHD (
http://www.bartleby.com/61/roots/IE262.html) doesn't help me past the
lox This etymological ramble is rescued from the deep, dark and dank recesses of my memory. I'm thinking maybe Mario Pei's
The Story of Language.
Quick check of
lacquer and
shellac shows that the AHD traces the
lac element (
http://www.bartleby.com/61/59/L0005900.html) to the Sanskrit. Maybe the IE WordWizards have changed their collective mind since the dark ages of my intro to linguisitics, but it sure sounds good, doesn't it?
I got another one involving tapping a desk, pouring a beer and cutting threads in a hole that they seem to have abandoned me on, too.
