356 THE LATIN VERB JUBERE. 



Hebrew, the Syriac, the Chaldee, the Arabic, and the Keltic all 

 agree in having d as the initial letter ; and d a b a r itself is a very- 

 old word, for it occurs frequently in the oldest books of the 

 Hebrew Scriptures. Then (2) abair conies from dabair by 

 aspirating the d, which then becomes the breathing h and is lost 

 (s) ; thus we get e b , e b u (in composition h e b u), epos, e i p e i n, 

 hepomai, a b h r-a n, o b a i r, a o b h a i r. Corresponding to the 

 loss of the d here, a familiar example of a similar effect of 

 aspiration occurs in the Greek word deile = eile = hele = Ion. 

 alee, which is connected with the I.-K. adjective deal, geal, 

 " bright " in its primary tense. Of the K. words which I have 

 now cited, o b a i r is so like the L. o p e r-a, opus, that Ebel places 

 it among the words which the Latin has given to the Keltic. If 

 obair is a loan word, the Keltic is the lender, not the borrower, 

 for a b-a i r (u) is a legitimate formation in Keltic from the root 

 dab, a b. And so it has fared with other words which the Keltic, 

 although the original owner, is said to have borrowed. Again, 

 by dropping the initial a, we have bar-n, " a judge," E. baron 

 of the Court of Exchequer, and, by metathesis and the addition 

 of a participial ending, we have, bru-idh-inn, brawdcl, bryd, 

 breith, breath, brathar. And of these, if we take breith 

 "a judge" in its uncontracted participial form, ab-air-adh,, 

 "judging," and to this add -air to denote the personal agent 

 (u), we have ab'rath-er and by metathesis the L. noun arbit-er, 

 "a judge, an umpire." This I consider a more natural and a 

 more satisfactory derivation than that accepted by Curtius, Corssen, 

 Vani^ek and others — from a r for ad " to " and b a for g a, " to go." 

 And as arbiter, like jubere, is a purely Latin word, I maintain 

 that this derivation materially assists to establish the close 

 connection of the Latin with the Keltic. And further, if, to the 

 form bair, which exists in I.-K. in such words as bair-se-ach, 

 "a scold," bairsich, "to scold," (cf. H. dabar, "to admonish") 

 I add the K. termination amh, I get bar am h, "a word" — a 

 form which is found now only in the Irish adjective noun 

 baramh-ail "an opinion," (cf. H. amar, "to think"). This 

 b a r a m h would be sounded baruv or barv, and b a r v, by 

 merely transposing the aspirate from the end of the word to its 

 beginning, gives the L. verb-um, " a word." Connected with 

 bar, barv is the E. word brawl, as to which our puzzled 

 etymologists say as usual that it is formed from the sound. By 

 adding the frequentative letter-syllable 1, barv becomes bar v-e 1 

 = b r a w 1, "to talk much," hence " a noisy quarrel "; and from bar 

 by reduplication comes the Gr. b a r-b a r-i z o, "to talk in a foreign 

 tongue," of which, so far as I know, no derivation has yet been 

 offered. (3) Next as to the conjugation form radh, I observe 

 that the present participle of a b a i r, if written in full, would be 



