If LEUTIKA is a familiar Greek word, I wonder why the only online reference I can find to it is the name of some guy who got murdered. I did find a lot of words for ships and boats in Greek - none significantly similar to LUTE though.
How old is this word? Could it be an independent borrowing from Arabic (al 'ud means "the wood" - could easily refer to a wooden boat)? Or could the word for the boat have derived from shape of a lute after the lute appeared in Europe? Well, if I could find any reference to the word I might track it down. What is the Spanish cognate? >>> There is a fascinating discussion on the etymology of LUTE on the >>> French >>> lute-list. In a nutshell: not only the Greek provenance of the word is >>> no >>> longer discountable, but limiting oneself to Arabic provenance is >>> beginning >>> to look ludicrous. The messages can be found on Yahoo-Groups. >> >> Unfortunately, I do not speak French. Would you mind to keep us >> informed? > Not at all, happy to oblige: > In many European languages there are LUTE-like words that describe MARINE > VESSELS of obvious derivation from the familiar Greek (HA)LEUTIKA, in > Italian, Spanish, Catalan, French, AND last but not least- Slavonic > languages. > This certainly is corroborated by the iconographic evidence of lutes > predating Muslims' spewing out of Hijaz. > RT > > -- > http://polyhymnion.org/torban > > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html > -- http://DoctorOakroot.com - Rough-edged songs on homemade GIT-tars.
