A ride on an unbroken colt

Animal names come up in this blog with some regularity, and our readers may remember that no one has trouble with them except etymologists. Colt is no exception. Despite its age (the word was known in Old English), it has been relegated to the words of unknown or uncertain origin. The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology (1966) cites a few possible cognates (or lookalikes) and says “…of obscure origin.” The OED online says the same. However, one thing is known: the old word also referred to a young donkey and a young camel. Consequently, the root was never bound up with only “a young stallion” or “a young horse.” If we succeed in discovering the sought-for original sense, it will probably refer (in some general way) to an unspecified hoofed creature, not fully-grown.

With regard to sounds, we should remember that vowels often alternate in the root (as in ride ~ rode ~ ridden, speak ~ spoke, come ~ came, riffraff, ping-pong, and so forth), and the common term, referred to in my posts, is ablaut. Consequently, with all due respect to the vowels, our search should mainly concentrate on the root k-l, assuming that t in colt is a possible remnant of an old suffix. One might object that we are playing a game of giveaway: with so many preconditions, who won’t discover an etymology? This objection would be wrong: words are not soldiers on parade, wearing the same uniform and marching in step. Variation is the very soul of word history. The problem is that a linguist should know the laws of the variation: not everything is allowed to alternate with everything else!

Several perfectly reasonable suggestions about the words related to colt were made long ago. In Gothic, a fourth-century Germanic language (now dead), the noun kilthei “womb” occurs (-ei had the value of ee in Modern English thee and was not part of the root). An easily recognizable cognate of kilthei is Modern English child, from Old English cild. A child is then the fruit of the womb, and colt emerges as another “child,” but with a specialized meaning. The cautious Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology says: “…but cf. Sw[edish] kult, kulter, kulting, applied to half-grown animals and boys.” Few things are less informative than this perennial cf., used in dictionaries. How are we supposed to compare (“confer”) those forms? It appears that the Scandinavian words are related or at least seem to be related to colt. Anyway, let us “confer.” Indeed, besides the forms listed above, we discover Swedish kull (from kolder) “boy,” Swedish dialectal kullt “boy”; Danish kuld “brood” and Danish dialectal koltring “lad”; Norwegian kuld “siblings, children born to the same parents”; Old Icelandic kollr “round tip; head, skull,” and Middle Dutch poggenkuller “a frog’s clutch” (that is, the eggs laid by a female). The Old Icelandic place name Kolli may belong here too. My list is even longer, but we hardly need more words, because all of them point in the same direction. Even if some forms, cited above, only seem to be related and have to be disregarded, it is clear that all over the Germanic-speaking world, the complex k-l tends to refer to round (roundish) objects and children.

 It has been a long time since I mentioned the First Consonant Shift in this blog. Germanic is an Indo-European language, but it changed the old consonants b, d, and g to p, t, and k (b is problematic, but we need not worry about it here). The classic examples are Latin duo, related to English two, and Latin genus, related to English kin. It follows that if the root k-l has cognates outside Germanic, it should have the form g-l. An incontestable example has been found only in Sanskrit, but it needs a long explanation, and I’ll skip it. However, see below! While examining the k-l root, it does not seem to be too adventurous to add calf to our herd. The animal name calf has even more close relatives than colt: its exact cognates occur in Gothic, German, Dutch, and Scandinavian. Etymologists feel a bit safer while dealing with calf than with colt and cite Scottish Gaelic galba “a very fat man” and Latin globus “globe; heap” (note the g-l group in those two non-Germanic languages!). Here, too, they encounter several tough questions (common when one goes into the Indo-European antiquity), none of which is of prime importance in this context. My only point is that Germanic col–t and cal-f are rather probably related and that col– and cal– referred to round things (remember globe!) and by inference, to young animals. If this conclusion is valid, then colt will no longer be a word “of unknown origin.”

Of course, the only question that is really worth asking is why the complex g-l (in Germanic, k-l) acquired such a meaning. Here, I’ll repeat what everybody says when confronted by this question. We connect sound and meaning only when the word in question is either sound-imitative (crash, crush, sizzle, giggle, yelp, bow–wow, and so forth) or sound-symbolic (a much less transparent case than the first). Why g-l? In a way, this is the question about the origin of language (incidentally, a much-discussed question today!). It is rather unlikely that we’ll ever be able to go beyond the supposition that once upon a time language was wholly sound-imitative and sound-symbolic. Today, neither comparative linguistics nor psycholinguistics can explain why the group g-l evoked associations with round things, but it apparently did. So much for colts and calves.

And here is a small note “for dessert.” Colt is related to kilt! Kilt surfaced in texts only in the early eighteenth century, and there is no doubt that it is of Scandinavian origin. In Old Icelandic, we find kilting “skirt.” Modern Scandinavian languages and especially dialects display a wide array of closely related nouns and verbs. Opinions about the origin of kilting diverge (who has ever seen etymologists agree on the source of an old word?), but if I am right, those opinions complement, rather than contradict one another.

Three suggestions have been offered with regard to kilting. Perhaps kilting is related to Old English cild “child.” This suggestion makes perfect sense and returns us to Gothic kilthei “womb.” Or perhaps the closest cognate of kilting is calf. Since I have a strong suspicion that cild “child” and calf belong together, I have no objections. Finally, kilting has been compared with colt. Again, as could be expected, I concur! No one has thought of combining all three suggestions, because the words discussed above (child, calf, and colt) are usually referred to different roots. Anyway, a kilting is a skirt, and it is only natural that the word’s root refers to the lap (as in sit in one’s lap) and the womb. The calf, the colt, and the child come from the womb. The tie among the three words and kilt looks natural. If I am forced to choose the best connection among those three, I’ll vote for kilt and cild “child,” but I’d rather abstain.

PS. I also wish to thank those who have commented on my post “Westward Ho.”

_{Featured image by Internet Archive Book Images via Flickr. CC0 1.0.}