Hungarian Historical Phonology ostor

ostor 'whip'

First attestation/Old Hungarian data

[coming]

Important dialectal forms

[coming]

Uralic/Pre-Hungarian reconstruction

? *oćtara

Cognates suggested in earlier research

Mansi South aśtə·r, East ōśtər, North å̄śter < Proto-Mansi *āćtər 'whip'

Commentary

The Indo-Iranian origin of the Hungarian word is widely accepted. However, there are disputes involving the age of the borrowing and the exact relationship of the Hungarian word and the alleged Mansi cognate.

The Hungarian and Mansi vocalism cannot be regularly derived from a common source which quite clearly points to parallel loanwords. However, the loan has to be quite old because of Mansi *ć and Hungarian *š (< from Pre-Hungarian *ć?). Already in Proto-Iranian this word would have had *št. The substitution requires further study; the chronology of the borrowing is not clear but the etymology as such is without a doubt.

For the semantic reconstruction of the Indo-Iranian word and its development in Old Indo-Aryan and Old Iranian, see Wojtilla (2002).

Note that the Mari cognate (KB waštə̑r 'Sprößling, Schößling (des Baumes), Gerte, Rute, laubiger Zweig, Badebesen, Kehrbesen' etc.) mentioned by the UEW cannot belong here regularly as neither the semantic or phonological correspondences are regular. It is unlikely that the Mari word is a loan from the same Indo-Iranian word.

Conclusion

A convincing loan from Indo-Iranian. Hungarian and Mansi words parallel loanwords.

References

Munkácsi 1901: 494–495

Jacobsohn 1922: 52

FUV: 134

Korenchy 1972: 56–57. No. 8: PUg ← Iranian

Joki 1973: 299

Ligeti 1986: 135

UEW s.v. oćtɜ-rɜ: ? Proto-Ugric Uralonet

Katz 1985: 231

Katz 2003: 187–188

Lushnikova 1990: 108

Zhivlov 2013: 220: Mansi *āćtər ← Andronovo Aryan

Holopainen 2019

Wojtilla 2002