Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the Other Italic Languages (review)

The Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the Other Italic Languages (EDL) is the seventh volume in the Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series. This series publishes the etymological research of a Leiden University project whose goal is "to identify and describe the common lexical heritage of the Indo-European languages." Michiel Driessen began work on the Latin volume in 1998 as his Ph.D. project. He completed most of the entries under the letters A and B before he decided to change professional careers. The project was then given to Michiel de Vaan to complete.

As the title indicates, EDL has Latin as its focus, but includes also Faliscan, the Sabellic languages (Oscan, Umbrian, South Picene, and the so-called 'minor' Sabellic languages), and Venetic, which de Vaan classifies as a member of the Italic branch. In keeping with the aims of the project, the dictionary entries are restricted to words generally thought to have Indo-European or Italic etyma, but a few borrowed words are included as well as a few whose origins are unknown (e.g., gutta "drop") or uncertain (e.g., mānus "good"). Even with this limitation the dictionary weighs in at a hefty 825 pages and it has a hefty price tag to match.

The organizational structure of the entries in EDL makes it easy to use. Each entry is divided into four sections. Section 1 is introductory material: the citation form of the entry, the definition, and the date of the earliest attestation. Section 2 is a list of derivative formations, each one accompanied by the date of earliest attestation. The third section is the etymological component proper. Wherever possible, de Vaan reconstructs the Proto-Italic root or stem and cites Italic cognates. This is followed by the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European root form and by a list of cognates in Indo-European languages. Most entries, particularly those with difficult etymologies, are accorded considerable space for discussion; see, for example, the survey of problems presented by lacruma "tear" (322). The last section of each entry is composed of key bibliographic references, prominent among which are EDL's predecessors, Alfred Ernout and Antoine Meillet's Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine (1979, 4th ed.) and Alois Walde and Johann Hofmann's Lateinisches etymologisches Wörterbuch I & II (1930, 1954).

The etymologies are preceded by a short introduction covering important background information: the Italic branch of Indo-European, etymological methods, and the phonology of Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Italic, and Old Latin. The lexical indices, which make up the final one hundred pages of the book, are enormously useful. Every word cited in the dictionary is in the index, including all reconstructed Proto-Indo-European roots and stems.

It is impossible to produce a book of this size without a few lapses, editorial or otherwise. There are typos (278, "distrubtion"), stylistic infelicities (10, "included into" for "included in"; 13, "shortly" for "briefly"; 585, "excrements"), and missing macrons (126, bidens for bidēns; 326, lanx for lānx). Length is erroneously attributed to short vowels before the cluster -gn- in dignum, lignum, signum, tignum, etc. A few items are missing, e.g., Hernican udmom, which refers to a water vessel of some sort and must be a zero-grade derivative from the Proto-Indo-European root *wed- "water." Faliscan umom, if from *udmom, belongs here too. Several bibliographic references are missing. The etymology of testis, "witness," does not refer to Joshua Katz' seminal article Testimonia Ritus Italici, although the title is listed in the general bibliography at the end of the book. It goes without saying that there will be disagreements over etymologies. The origin of Italic *uīnom, "wine," (Latin uīnum, Faliscan uinom, etc.) is a case in point. De Vaan cites only the etymology of Beekes, who derives the word from the Proto-Indo-European root *weyh₁- "weave, wrap." However, the same word for "wine" is found in the West Semitic languages...