DATA AND NOTES. 205 



Hebrew : hakah, hakak, to cut into, to hack, to engrave, to carve, to 

 draw, to paint, to delineate. 



The identification involves none but frequent mutations as between 

 Efate 1 and Nuclear Polynesia. The verb may be derived from the tree 

 name; the tree may have been named from the purpose to which it is put. 

 Of the two equal possibilities I incline to the former, for the use of the i 

 in forming the Samoan verb tends to make it transitive and specific, literally 

 to put-&o£a-on. If this be so the sense is one of painting or daubing. 

 Therefore in Efate, where our author specifies that it is used only of bast 

 cloth as in Samoa, the sense "to scrape" can only be descriptive of the 

 motion of painting and without signification of removing aught. He 

 has evidently relied upon that sense to clinch his identification of meaning 

 with the Hebrew word proposed as ancestral. The general quality of his 

 Semitic parallels is quaintly illustrated in this Hebrew word. He has given, 

 in which I have duly followed him, the emphasis of italics to the definition 

 hack, evidently struck with the resemblance hakah-hack, and not unwilling 

 to let the implication stand that our hack is Yiddish. Our Germanic fore- 

 bears had the word long before they acquired the raw material of the 

 Judenhetze. 



96. 

 kaf, to be bent. 



Maori: kohu, somewhat bent, concave, warped. 

 Hebrew : kafaf, to be bent. 

 Cf. kabwe 179. 



97- 

 kari, takan, to hasten, to go swiftly. 



Maori: kari, keri, to rush along violently, as wind. 

 Arabic: kara, to hasten. 



98. 

 kon, kona, kokon, ngkon, to be bitter. 



Samoa : 'ona, 'o'ona, bitter, sour, acid, poisonous ; 'onasia, to be drunk, 

 poisoned. Tonga: kona, konahia, bitter, drunk, poisoned. 

 Futuna: kona, bitter, poison. Niue: kona, konahia, bitter, 

 acid, nauseous, drunk, poisoned. Nuguria: kona, sour. Uvea: 

 kona, bitter, poisoned, drunk; konahia, drunkenness. Fotuna: 

 kona, drunk. Hawaii: ona, drunk. Tahiti: onaona, sharp, 

 disagreeable. 

 Mota: gogona, bitter. Santo: kogona, id. Eromanga: nakan, id. 

 Arabic: homa-t, bitter, heat, gall, poison. Ethiopic: hama-t, id. 

 Hebrew: hamah, id. 

 The Proto-Samoan radical is konas. 



The Efate forms show us still more clearly than in 77 the graduation of 

 the process by which a final syllable is lost, not as syllable but by successive 

 abrasion of its members. In kona we have the transition form after the 

 abrasion of the final s. In kon, kokon, ngkon we find the ultimate result 

 upon the abrasion of the then final vowel. Thus it is made clear that the 

 syllable does not drop off as a unit. 



The proposed Semitic identifications accord with this only in one or in 

 two vowels, the consonant structure being wholly unlike. 



