Introduction

Within the vast literature on the topic of the theory and practice of etymology, there exists a relatively small group of contributions that work with the “etymological formulae”, a term which is, at least at first sight, not quite perspicuous. In this paper I will therefore attempt to outline a history of the notion and discuss its usefulness in etymology.

Etymological formulae: Ross, Hamp, and Rudnyc'1yj

The scholar who used the notion “etymological formulae” for the first time was Alan S. C. Ross in his 1958 guide to etymology (Ross 1958). In this somewhat unusually conceived introduction to the field (cf. Considine 2013: 19–26 for a thorough discussion of the work), the author introduced the term “formulae” on pages 36–39. In order “to define Etymology” (Ross 1958: 36), he brought out one basic formula for loanwords and five basic formulae for inherited words. In Ross'1 delimitation, if there is a language A0 (A1, A2 … An being languages of the same family and A being their common parent language) and if we are concerned with the etymology of one of its words x0, the etymological formulae read as follows:

A. for loanwords:

A0x0 [‘z0'1; lwf. B y [‘ζ'1 – where z0 is the meaning of x0 of A0, ζ that of y of B and the square brackets mean that the giving meanings is superfluous.

B. for inherited words:

B1. A0x0 [‘z0'1 < Ax (> Ai1xi1 [‘zi1'1 Ai2xi2 [‘zi2'1 … Aimxim [‘zim'1) – where x is the word in the parent language A, from which x0 of A0 descends; Ai1, Ai2 … Aim are a selection of m languages of the n + 1 members of A's family; xi1, xi2 … xim the descendants of x of A in these languages; zi1, zi2 … zim the meanings of these m words.