GENERAL WORDS FOR SEX AND KINSHIP 119 



bride is the one led away, i.e. to the house of the bride- 

 groom. Here, again, the patriarchal notion of early 

 society is at the bottom of the interpretation, and we 

 reach our conception of primitive Teutonic society by 

 working in a circle. Why, too, should we go to a 

 Sanskrit root, with apparently no Teutonic parallel, to 

 explain a purely Teutonic word ? In Gothic the word 

 is Imps, A.S. brid, O.H.G. prut, M.H.G. brtH, and in 

 modern Norwegian Landsmaal, brur, in which it is to 

 be noted the characteristic dental does not appear (com- 

 pare also the Plattdeutsch brilmen for bridegroom). In 

 O.H.G. the meaning of the word was rather wide, thus, 

 young wife, bride (before loss of virginity), daughter- 

 in-law, geliebte, concubine, and occasionally for any young 

 girl. Phaffenbrztt is a priest's concubine ; wdnbrut, a 

 woman mistaken for a virgin ; windesprdt, the whirlwind, 

 looked upon as a goddess ; brutsunu is ninth-century Ger- 

 man for Christ, the Virgin's son. On the whole, the 

 evidence seems to point to the initial sense as that of a 

 young woman, who may or may not have borne children. 

 It seems to me that Fick has come nearer to the 

 mark than the above authorities in connecting bride 

 with the root of the Greek /3/ouo>, to be full, or bursting ; 

 M.H.G. briezen, broz, swell, bud. He mentions Fruti 

 as a name for Venus, and I suppose we may add Latin 

 frutex, that which bursts out or sprouts, a shrub. The 

 root of braut would thus be the same as that of O.H.G. 

 pruten and English breed ; the outcome of the bruotan, 

 briiten, is the brood, A.S. brod. In M.H.G. briuten 

 and briute are the verb and noun for the sexual act. 

 In modern Low German a term of vulgar abuse is 



