ETIMOLOGIA PROSSIMA VS ETIMOLOGIA REMOTA Buchi va 2016

ETIMOLOGIA PROSSIMA VS. ETIMOLOGIA REMOTA Buchi, Éva (2016): "Etymological dictionaries". In: Durkin, Philip (ed. ), The Oxford Handbook of Lexicography, Oxford: Oxford University Press: 338 -349 Stefano Angelucci

INTRODUCTION • Etimologia prossima: to put forward direct or immediate etymologies • Etimologia remota: not to put forward direct or immediate etymologies A lack of balance between the two approaches must be criticised, even in the best available etymological dictionaries

ETIMOLOGIA REMOTA APPROACH Etymological dictionaries are full of examples where the etimologia remota approach prevails: • Vasmer’s Russisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (Russ. EW) • Cortelazzo and Zolli’s Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana (DELI) • The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology (CODEE)

EXAMPLE OF AN ENTRY EXCERPT FROM CODEE “F[rench] ménage, earlier menaige, manaige [, normal development of] [Proto-]Rom[ance] *mansiōnāticum, f[ormed on] L[atin] mansiō, -ōn-” (s. v. ménage)” Only “F[rench] ménage”, that is the etimologia prossima part of the etymology, is relevant. Indeed, the fact that French MÉNAGE is itself inherited has no bearing on its being borrowed by English: had French MÉNAGE been borrowed from another language or created from French material, the borrowing into English would have occurred exactly in the same way

CONCLUSION The reader is left in the dark about the question whether the two lexemes mentioned by the CODEE, namely MÉNAGE 1 ‘housekeeping’ and MÉNAGE 2 ‘domestic establishment’, are both borrowed from French or if one of them developed in English