Meaning of Wanderwort | Babel Free

Definitions

1. Alternative letter-case form of Wanderwort.
   alt-of
2. A loanword that has spread to many different languages, often through trade or the adoption of foreign cultural practices.

Equivalents

Examples

“Mrs. [Agnes Smith] Lewis has correctly observed that many corrections in the old papyri (things which no doubt the διορωτής corrected) were misinterpreted by the ancients (hence what [Adalbert] Merx calls "Wanderwörte").”

“Hittite t/dapar- "leiten, verwalten, regieren" (and also with the Glossenkeil) is connected and we are in the presence of a Wanderwort that ultimately derives from the above Capp[adocian] *labar- "herrschen".”

“[Diedrich Hermann] Westermann (1927) in his pioneering identification of "West Sudanic" common lexemes (Niger-Congo in modern terms) also identified Wanderworte, "wander-words" that show up in widely differing language families in similar form.”

“Some of the vocabulary can be classed as Wanderwörter – items that have diffused widely and whose ultimate source is sometimes hard to discover. […] While 'crocodile' is an animal with exceptional properties which may lead to it being a common topic in interethnic conversations, the same reasons cannot be adduced for the other items above or many other Wanderwörter in this region, at least not given the cultural configuration of the recent past.”

“In an earlier paper, however, I suggested—without, I confess, having noticed the Slavic forms—that ασβὀς is a very old word indeed, reflecting directly *azgṷ-o-, the thematization of *azgu-, a form of the Wanderwort for "mole" (cf. Greek σκάλοψ and (ἀ)σπάλαξ, Sanskrit ākhú- "mole-like rat," and Hittite āšku- "mole (?)") that travels in concert with *tasku- "badger" and gets confused with it also in Galatian […] and Basque (azkoin "badger").”

“Affinal terms, designating spouses and in-laws, appear to be among the most highly borrowed kinship terms in Australia, following the worldwide trend identified by Matras[…]. Some of these are notable Wanderwörter 'travelling words' that are borrowed successively into languages of different groups and families across long distances[…]. In the case of two such affinal Wanderwörter in northern Australia, I have argued that changes in distribution and meaning which accompany diffusion tell a story of the diffusion of new marriage patterns and which kin controlled the betrothal of women, mothers-in-laws or fathers-in-laws[…].”

CEFR level