Gothic Etymological Studies

It is obviously to be expected that a certain portion of the Gothic vocabulary will always remain etymologically unexplained, for the sources from which the vocabulary of any language is derived can never be known in their entirety. Borrowings from tongues now extinct and even unknown must inevitably have occurred. Some were doubtless borrowed into Germanic, others into Gothic itself. Any etymological study that resulted in one hundred percent clarification would be suspect, for the scientific means of achieving such perfection do not exist. It is not the purpose of this dissertation to list hypothetical reconstructions, Germanic or Indo-European, for those Gothic words whose etymology continues to defy analysis, although such reconstruction constituted, of necessity, part of the initial spade work of the investigation. It is also not within the scope of the present study to attempt to find possible non-Indo- European cognates for the hitherto unexplained words, desirable as such procedure may be, for this lies beyond the competence of the writer. It is reasonable to expect that some light could still be shed on the problem by specialists in Finno-Ugric, for example, who were also well-versed in Germanic. The following section of the thesis includes newly proposed etymologies and etymologies reinstated, despite rejection by Feist and others, justification for that reinstatement being given in the form of new or neglected evidence in support of their validity.