WW #16: Bone

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Word 8 on the Liepzig-Jakarta list is “bone”, which none of my languages had words for. The new words are Muipidan nubut’ïde [ˈnu.buˌtʼɨ.də], Kharulian kótron [ˈkɔt.rɔn], and Nitherian tsa [tsa].

Muipidan nubut’ïde originally referred to the interior of plants, as opposed to their bark or skin, but was also used for bones that were still inside the body, as opposed to pat’ado “dry bone”. But by the classical period, pat’ado had fallen out of use (remaining only in derivations), and “bone” became the core meaning of nubut’ïde.

Kharulian kótron is used in the plural to refer to the underlying structure of something. For example, one might say Marwi kótrony umat [ˈma.rˠi ˈkɔt.rɔɲ uˈmat] to mean “The house is sturdy”, literally “The house’s bones are good”.

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