Help me with LOOT?
Hobson Jobson finds separate origins for Hindi and Persian versions:
Hind. lūṭ, & Skt. lotra, for loptra, root lup, 'rob, plunder'; luṇṭ, 'to rob'
Ar.Pers. lūṭīy 'one of the people of Lot,' a blackguard.
Lūtis, professional buffoons"-Will's Modern Persia
Etymologist John Kelly says:
Lotra .. is from the Sanskrit root lup or rup, “to break.”
From here, historical linguistics point us back to the Proto-Indo-European *reup-, “to snatch.”
Kelly @mashedradish traces many words back to the root "reup" including Rob, Rip, Rover, Robes ("clothes taken as booty").
*reup also gives us reave/rob through a Germanic root he doesn't name but I assume is raub.
So many thoughts on piracy (which I'll spare you from here)!
More specific queries on this, for my linguistic friends: Does this sound right? Do the Hindi and Persian words have entirely separate genealogies or are they linked?
Hobson Jobson adds this:
St. Francis Xavier (1545): "Equidem mirari satis nequeo, quot, praeter usitatos modos, insolitis flexionibus inauspicatum illud rapiendi verbum quaedam avaritiae barbaria conjuget!"
Would rapiendi here come from the same root, reup?
@mashedradish
@DrMaDMo Looping you into some overlapping threads. Loot: etymologists on this thread that might interest you; also @ellezakelley's brilliant comments undergirded my final comments. Also In Defense of Looting (2020) by Vicki Osterweil @Vicky_ACAB
You can follow @techno_kavi.
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