Contents

Romain Garnier
Sur l’étymologie du latin virgō « vierge »
SEC 19 (2014), 59–70

Abstract
On the etymology of Latin virgō ‘virgin’

The following paper is intended to explain the etymology of Lat. uirgō ‘virgin’, which serves both as adjective and substantive. There is a synchronic opposition in Latin between uirgō and mulier ‘woman’, the last of which clearly alludes to sexuality, in such a locution as mulierem reddere ‘to make someone a woman’. According to the Hittite formula natta=arkant- ‘not-covered, unmounted’, which is used for sheep and cows, this puzzling Latin word could be accounted for by a PIE privative compound *h₁í-h₁r̥g̑^h-ōⁿ ‘not-covered, unmounted’. This inherited vocable would eventually belong to the PIE root *h₁erg̑^h- ‘to mount, cover’ which is likely to have been used by cattle-breeders.

BibTeX

@article{Garnier14,
	author	= {Garnier, Romain},
	title	= {Sur l’étymologie du latin \textit{virgō} « vierge »},
	journal	= {Studia Etymologica Cracoviensia},
	volume	= {19},
	year	= {2014},
	pages	= {59–70}
}