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How do you get from a mountain to a thief?!?
Because of iron age hill forts becoming boroughs. The word burglar ...
[While editing this to fix the HTML problem, I lost most of the post. Ah, well, maybe later I can fix it ...]
Before getting into the commute, here's the short version. The word burglar is from a Medieval Latin word burgulator. The first part of which is from Old English burh 'castle; borough'. (The OED thinks it may be a half loan translation of Old English burhbrece 'breaking into a castle'. More later.
[Trying to recreate the post with addenda.]
What I was trying to say earlier, which got lost in a flurry of octothorpes and digits, was that it seemed a natural progression to me from 'high place' > 'mountain' > 'hill fort' > 'castle' > 'city'. Then a burglar is somebody who breaks into a castle. Another nice touch is that, the verb that the Anglo-Latin noun burgulator comes from exists in a 13th century document: burgulare 'to burgle'. (Though the modern burgle is a back-formation of burglar.) So, the burg of burglar seems connected to Berg 'mountain' and Burg 'castle' of German, but the big question mark has got that l in its sights. Whence and whither?
Latin burgus 'castle' and Greek πυργος (purgos) 'castle' are borrowings from a Germanic language. Cf. Gothic baurgs. And many of the etymologists I consulting pointed out that Urartian (an agglutinative non-Semitic, non-Indo-European language of ancient Anatolia) has burgana 'palace'.
At this point, in the old and lost post, I mentioned that it's intriguing that Russian has гора (gora) 'mountain' and город( gorod) 'city', though these words are from different roots.
Last edited by zmjezhd; 07/17/09 02:27 AM.
Entire Thread Subject Posted By Posted inselberg Zed 07/16/09 05:40 AM Re: inselberg BranShea 07/16/09 06:43 AM Re: inselberg Faldage 07/16/09 11:37 AM Re: *bhereg- zmjezhd 07/16/09 12:00 PM Re: inselberg BranShea 07/16/09 12:13 PM Re: inselberg LukeJavan8 07/16/09 04:45 PM Re: inselberg BranShea 07/16/09 08:09 PM Re: inselberg tsuwm 07/16/09 09:37 PM Re: inselberg Faldage 07/17/09 10:58 AM Re: inselberg BranShea 07/17/09 01:02 PM Re: inselberg Buffalo Shrdlu 07/17/09 01:57 PM Re: what the L? zmjezhd 07/17/09 02:22 PM Re: what the L? BranShea 07/17/09 05:51 PM Re: what the L? zmjezhd 07/17/09 06:01 PM Re: inselberg Albinoni 07/29/09 01:32 PM Re: inselberg Jackie 07/30/09 02:09 AM
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