The Etymology of Latin pirum ‘pear’ and the development of i to e before *r in Latin

Abstract

In this paper we derive Lat. pirum ‘pear’ from the PIE root *peys- ‘to crush, crumble’ (attested also in Lat. pīnsō ‘crush, pound’ and pistillum ‘pestle’). The semantic motivation lies in the delicate, crumbling texture of pears, and it has an exact parallel in Slavic, where, e.g., Croatian krƘška is derived from the same root as kršiti ‘crush’. The development of PIE *pisom > Lat. pirum is regular, since the development of *i to *e before *r was limited to the word-medial position (and the vowel e in serō ‘sow’ is analogical to the regular reflex found in compound verbs such as re-serō ‘to replant’, con-serō ‘to strew thickly’, etc.). Moreover, Gr. ápion ‘pear’ can then be easily derived from *ha-pihon < *sm-pisom, from the same PIE root *peys-.

Keywords

• Latin etymology
• pear
• Latin sound laws
• Proto-Indo-European