XPost: alt.usage.english
From: naddy@mips.inka.de
On 2025-06-30, Aidan Kehoe wrote:
> It’s an unremarkable borrowing from late Latin, OED describes [ad. late L.
> grumus little heap, hillock;]. I can’t find any convincing further
etymology
> beyond that.
De Vann in the _Etymological Dictionary of Latin_ (2008):
------------------->
grūmus ‘heap of earth, hillock’ [m. o] (Acc.+)
Derivatives: dēgrūmare 'to level off (Enn,+).
PIt. *gr
mo- ‘heap’.
PIE *h₂ǵr-
m-o-. IE cognates: see s.v. gremium.
Lat. grumus could be connected with gremium < *grem- and OCS gramada
‘heap, pile’ < *gr
m-. A preform *gr
mos may have turned into grūmus
phonetically: the change of *
m > ūm might also found in hūmānus
(see s.v. hom
). The words that retain -
m- either have a following
front vowel (abd
men, n
men, f
mes, m
mentum. t
menium,
men, v
mer,
c
mis) or are due to a contraction of *o+e (p
mum, pr
mus); the
only exception is R
ma. Thus, the raising of *
in front of m may
require the additional condition of a following back vowel (no
exceptions) or non-front vowel (exception R
ma; but being a name,
this may have escaped the sound change). For the relevance of the
vowel in the next syllabe for the a vowel change, compare the change
*e > o /m,w _ CV[non-front] discussed by Schrijver 1991: 466-470.
Note also that the raising of *ē to Lat. ī is conditioned in a
similar way, viz. by -i- in the next syllable,
Bibl.: WH I: 623, EM 283, IEW 376ff. → gremium
<-------------------
--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.inka.de
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