цӕхх

Ossetian

Etymology

Uncertain. Usually compared with Northeast Caucasian, e.g. Avar цӏан (cʼan) or Lak цӏу (cʼu). Likely cognates include also Northern Mansi сях (sâh), Upper Ob Southern Selkup сэак (seak), possibly moreover Hungarian szik (“alkali”), usually considered loans from some ancestor of Ossetian, though according to Korenchy, loaning from Uralic into Alanic instead cannot be ruled out entirely.

It cannot be compared with Proto-Nakh *tuxi (“salt”) and Proto-Tsezian *cɔɲ (“salt”) for phonetic reasons.

Noun

цӕхх • (cæxx)

1. salt

Synonyms

• (Digor) цӕнхӕ (cænxæ)

References

• Korenchy, Éva. 1972. Iranische Lehnwörter in den obugrischen Sprache ('Iranian Loanwords in the Ob-Ugric Languages'). Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó.