u-stem

OIr melo acts as a **u-stem** genitive and absolutely nothing like the original genitive **mlitós, while milis 'sweet' being a separate word shouldn't contaminate our assessment of 'honey'.

Missing honey 2010

And you clearly don't know anything about Old Irish; the genitive of /all/ i-stems is refashioned after the u-stem nouns.

My sweet honey bee 2010

You never bothered reading Douglas/Adams, Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture, p.271 under *mélit: "... while OIr mil gen. melo is an i-stem, analogically refashioned after the u-stem 'mead'."

My sweet honey bee 2010

Ethan Osten: "And you clearly don't know anything about Old Irish; the genitive of /all/ i-stems is refashioned after the u-stem nouns."

My sweet honey bee 2010

One would expect a hypothetical PIE u-stem **gʰóndus 'grasper; hand' to end up as **gantuz in Proto-Germanic but certainly not *handuz which rather suggests a non-existent PIE stem **kondʰ-u-.

Archive 2009-10-01 2009

One would expect a hypothetical PIE u-stem **gʰóndus 'grasper; hand' to end up as **gantuz in Proto-Germanic but certainly not *handuz which rather suggests a non-existent PIE stem **kondʰ-u-.

Searching for an etymology for Germanic *handuz 'hand' 2009

In light of Hittite militu- 'honeysweet'2, a characteristically Indo-European u-stem adjective derived from milit- 'honey', there should be no doubt where the first element comes from.

Archive 2009-12-01 2009

What is strangely compelling of course, is that madhu- could go back to something like this: *madH-u- An u-stem derivation from *madH.

Enticed by a drunken thought 2008

Glen Gordon: "You never bothered reading Douglas/Adams, Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture, p.271 under *mélit: "... while OIr mil gen. melo is an i-stem, analogically refashioned after the u-stem 'mead'."

My sweet honey bee 2010