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Viktor Levickij
Lat. servus ‘Diener, Sklave’, slav. *orbъ ‘Sklave, Waise, Kind’, slav. *sirota ‘Waise’
SEC 18 (2013), 83–90

pdf of volume 18


Abstract
Latin servus ‘servant, slave’, Slav. *orbъ ‘slave, orphan, child’, Slav. *sirota ‘orphan’

The oldest names for ‘slave’ in Indo-European languages are connected with the notions ‘captive’, ‘prisoner’, ‘tied’. Taking into consideration this typology we can assume that Lat. servus ‘servant, slave’ might go back to PIE *ser- ‘to tie, to bind’. PIE *or-bho-s, to which Proto-Slav. *orbъ ‘slave, child, orphan’ goes back, may have been formed from *er-/or- ‘to cut, to separate’ > ‘orphan’. The Proto-Slav. word *sirota ‘orphan’ may also have been formed after this pattern.


BibTeX

@article{Levickij13,
author = {Levickij, Viktor},
title = {Lat. \textit{servus} ‘Diener, Sklave’, slav. *\textit{orbъ} ‘Sklave, Waise, Kind’, slav. *\textit{sirota} ‘Waise’},
journal = {Studia Etymologica Cracoviensia},
volume = {18},
year = {2013},
pages = {83–90}
}