OLD ARYAN WORDS 



One of the few Keltic words which the Roman 

 conquerors adopted from their Gaulish subjects 

 was the word rheda, used to describe a light four- 

 wheeled carriage. Such carriages were used for 

 posting, and the light, swift animal which drew 

 them received a special name, made by com- 

 pounding the root of veho> to " draw " or 

 " carry," with the name of this kind of carriage. 

 Thus arose the word veredus, " the drawer of the 

 rheda" the post-horse, or courier's horse ; and 

 so veredarius was a post-classic Latin word for 

 " courier ; " but the name veredus was not long 

 in becoming generalized, for in Martial we find 

 it used for a light, fleet hunting horse. At the 

 same time there came into general use the curi- 

 ously hybrid word paraveredus, made by pre- 

 fixing the Greek preposition ira/aa, meaning 

 " beyond," to veredus, to denote an extra post- 

 horse for extraordinary occasions. This mon- 

 grel word paraveredus, thus oddly made up out 

 of Greek, Latin, and Keltic elements, seems to 

 have been a favourite name for the horse in the 

 Middle Ages. In Ducange's great dictionary of 

 mediaeval Latin we find parvaredus, parafredus, 

 and palafredus, along with many other forms. 

 From palafredus came the French palefroi and 

 the English palfrey ; while the simple contraction 

 and abbreviation of the older paraveredus re- 

 sulted in the form pferd adopted by the modern 

 German. 



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