GENERAL WORDS FOR SEX AND KINSHIP 189 



but not indecently, for all that is male j 1 and it is just pos- 

 sible that German kerl, Icelandic karl, and English churl 

 for man may have sexual weight. The earliest glosses 

 for karl are amator and conjux, maritus ; for charalon, 

 amatores; charala is used even for the males of animals. 2 

 Fick connects charal with the Sanskrit g'drds, a lover, 

 a gallant. A.S. ceorlian is to marry of the woman, 

 as vifian is to marry of the man. Swestarkarl, sister's 

 man, is not glossed by a term for affinity, but by 

 cognatus a striking reminder of the old kin -group. 

 Thus we see that in charal the essential feature is the 

 male, rather than the husband. As buari degenerated into 

 bauer, so charal degenerated into churl with the change 

 of social institutions. 3 If we seek further for the origin 

 of the term, we note that Sanskrit gdrdmi means to rub, 

 grind; O.H.G. char, Modern Bavarian kar is a small 

 pot or vessel, a gat ; ypaiav appears in Hesychius as a 

 kneading trough or mortar; O.H.G. keran, cheran, 

 and A.S. cyrran, cernen are to turn, shake, churn ; 

 the upright axles of the local mills in Sweden and 

 Norway are still called kvarnkall and Jcvernkall, i.e. 

 chum-karls.* Lastly, we have the Spanish expressions 

 carail and carajo for the male organ of sex. Thus 

 without definite proof, there is still some evidence in 

 favour of charal as a name for the male taking its 



3 A possibly similar case is that of Armenian Ordz, a man, to be compared 

 with the Greek #p%ts. 



2 A.S. carlcatt, O.N. Jcarlfugl ; Landsmaal has kallbjorn, Rjupekall, etc., 

 where kail stands for karl. 



3 On the other hand, Czech, Serbian, Polish, Russian, and even modern 

 Greek dialects (kralj, krdlj, krdl, kar6U, KpaXys) seem to have developed the 

 word precisely like kuninck from the sexual sense to that of king. 



4 In parts of Norway mor (mother) is used of the massive millstone. 



