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orion sectually explicit (etymologies once more!)



Judith wrote:

>Heb. *kat*, of course is the sameword as mishnaic *kat* meaning class or
>division.   Like sect in Latin it comes from a word meaning to divide or
>cut (pure coincidence that cut and *kat* sound the same, though!).*kat*

Hm. I had thought that "sect" and "section"  had different sources (a sect
was a group "following" a certain way of life, from sequi "follow") but
I'm hardly an indo-europeanist. 

What word for "divide" or "cut" do you think "kat" comes from? KTT isn't
so much "cut" as "to crush by beating." Even if one concedes the semantic
development, I can't recall any qal- type nouns derived from geminate
roots (if KTT is indeed the root you are thinking of).Furthermore,
considering the two plurals kitti:m and kitto:t, the attenuation of a to i
and the spontaneous gemination in the plural seem suspicious. I'm aware
that this derivation is in the literature, but I don't find it convincing.

An etymology that I have not seen proposed is as a loan from Akkadian
kintu "family" (written both "kintu" and "kimtu" but probably expressing
only /kintu/; for the principle, see I.J. Gelb's "A Note on
Morphographemics" [Melanges Marcel Cohen pp. 73ff];  cf. kina:tu and its
Aramaic offspring kna:t, from which some, with great difficulty, derive
kat!). 

The move from "family" to "group, class, type" is not hard, and this
derivation has the advantage of explaining the morphology perfectly (kint-
>* kitt > {Philippi's Law} *katt > {reduction of final double consonants]
kat, with the plural preserving a more primitive form).

>What Jastrow calls Midrash "Tillim" is, in fact, Midrash Tehillim.  I've 
>no idea why he abbreviates it in that strange way!   

Because it's called Midrash Tillim.  AND it's called Midrash Tehilim. I
think the contracted form (from Tehilim, of course!) may actually be more
common (see references in Jastrow himself, for starters). 

>The citation from Jastrow begins with the word "elu", not the word "ilu",
>course -- but no doubt this was a typo on the part of Seth Sanders. 

Indeed it was! 


Seth Sanders