Reconstruction talk:Proto-Finnic/mato

Snake

Seeing that at least a few of the descendants (Estonian, Ingrian, Veps, Karelian, Ludian) have the inherited meaning "snake", perhaps the original Proto-Finnic meaning would include "snake" also? It seems strange to me that languages of both the Northern and Southern Finnic groups shifted from "worm" to "snake"; granted, the terms are alike, but not to that degree. Thadh (talk) 20:43, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

But *maþô also means "worm", so that must have been the original meaning in Proto-Finnic. —Rua (mew) 21:08, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

That says very little though, doesn't it? I can think af at least a few possible scenarios in which Proto-Finnic to get the meaning "snake":

• The meaning "snake" appeared later
• The meaning "snake" appeared when borrowing
• The meaning "snake" appeared while blending *maþô with *matadak ("to crawl")
• There were two lemmas, one meaning "worm" (from *maþô) and one meaning "snake" (from *matadak + *-o); though problematic
• The Finnic lemma is just a weird coincidence with *maþô, being a Proto-Uralic root

Some of these are more plausible that the others, but you see that *maþô meaning "worm" doesn't affect *mato meaning "worm, snake" Thadh (talk) 07:55, 18 August 2020 (UTC)