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E 0542 LIVER
The word " liver " is of Germanic origin .
H 0533 ב ל
Concept of root : seat
of life
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Hebrew word
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pronunciation
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English meanings
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ב ל
ב ב ל
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lev, liv-; levav
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heart, inner part, middle; heart
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Related English words
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liver
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Comparison between European words and
Hebrew
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Languages
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Words
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Pronunciation
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English meanings
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Similarity in roots
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Hebrew
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ב ל
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ב ב ל
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lev, liv-;
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levav
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heart, inner part, middle; heart
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l . b
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l . b . b < l . b
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English
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liver
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liver
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l . v
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German
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Leber
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léber
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liver
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l . b
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Dutch
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lever
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léver
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liver
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l . v
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Proto-Semitic *LIBI --- *LIB-ER Indo-European
Early Man, living his life, certainly tried to find out and understand where his being alive had its centre. We are accustomed to see pulsing of the heart as the basic sign of being alive . If this pulsing stops, life finishes. Therefore the heart must be the seat of our life. But other ideas are there as well. Modern science makes us think more about the brain as the seat of life. The functioning of the brain indicates that we live, and if it stops we are to be considered dead. Again some people have seen the belly as the essential part of themselves as a living being.
One of the theories, in our supposition, must have been that the seat of life is in the liver. Simply that is the reason why this organ, so different from all others and so important in its ambiguous role when part of a dead animal, has acquired its name in Germanic languages. Liver is the organ , subject of the action of living, in English. In German it is the "Leber" that makes us "leben", and in Dutch the "lever" makes us "leven".
Note:
- B and V. We see a B in German and a V in English and Dutch. In Hebrew we see a B that is pronounced V. In fact a Beth (
ב) is pronounced V at the end of a word and also mostly in the middle of a word. In many languages this kind of shift exists or has taken place before alphabetic spelling came about. Lovely the solution the Spaniards have "chosen". They pronounce B and V the same identical way, and the sound is in between English B and English V. It is not difficult to imitate at all. One just combines the two positions , touching the lower lip contemporarily with the upper lip (for B) and the upper teeth (for V).
Note:
- Hebrew . In modern language " lev " is just "heart", literally as well as figuratively. But in the Bible it also stood for "the inner part". This gives a strong support for our hypothesis of common origin .
The word "levav" is the result of a doubling of the second consonant of "lev". This is a very frequent phenomenon in Hebrew. In this specific case it may have been used to clearly express only the concept of "heart", and not like is the case with "lev" also the concept of "inner part".
Note:
- Hebrew gives no clear indications that the word "lev" for "heart", certainly an old word, had the meaning of "seat of life". It carries, like "heart" a series of figurative meanings, linked to personality, also in composed words. And especially interesting is the existence, in the Bible, of another word : "
ל
ב
ה , libbŕ"
for "heart". This looks rather like the kind of word shaping that in Hebrew corresponds with the Germanic one found in "liver".
Note:
- Germanic. We do not believe in the common theory that English "liver" and its sisters come
from an Indo-European root "*leip" indicating "stickiness", nor that is is related to Greek
"λιπος , lipos" that means "fat". Liver has nothing to do with stickiness, and even less than
most other parts of the body of mammals. And liver may be rather fat, but its "greasiness" is
even better hidden than that of most kinds of meat . Besides this the Greek word "lipos" (also
"lipas") basically stood for "dense liquid", also from vegetables. Via the use for the typically
dense liquid that is oil, it has come to also mean "fat" more in general.
Note:
- Proto-Semitic . Proto-Semitic had this root that continued into Hebrew, seen also in Aramaic and Syriac "ל ב א , libbŕ" and "lebbŕ = heart, stomach". Ugaritic uses the same two consonant root, Ethiopian has "lebb", Arabic "lubb" and Akkadian "libbu".
For the comparison with Indo-European it must be noted that in also in Aramaic the word " libba " meant "heart", but as well "stomach". And important is further the Amharic meaning of "belly". These facts tend to confirm our reasoning about the common origin of the words of this entry.
Proto-Semitic probably used already "*ל ב , L B". For our similarity in origin we indicate the form that happens to come nearer to Proto-Germanic.
Note:
- Proto-Germanic . The words for "liver" show much similarity. The opening consonant is "L". The following vowel is either " Ĭ " as in Old Norse, Norwegian, Old Frisian, Old English and English or "Ē" as in Swedish, Danish, Middle Dutch, Dutch, Middle Low German and Old, Middle and modern High German. The third consonant is mostly "V", but In Old Norse, Old English and Old Frisian "F", that anyhow returned to "V" in Norwegian and English. German and its predecessor have "B", as in "Leber". The probable Proto-Germanic form is "*L I B eR".
Note:
- Indo-European . We have no information that would allow a hypothesis different from Proto-Germanic.
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| Created: Tuesday 6 November 2007 at 22.30.54 Updated: 03/11/2012 at 16.06.45 |
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