Re: Word of the day; "grumous".

On 2025-06-30, Aidan Kehoe <kehoea@parhasard.net> wrote:

It’s an unremarkable borrowing from late Latin, OED describes [ad. late L.
grumus little heap, hillock;]. I can’t find any convincing further etymology
beyond that.

De Vann in the _Etymological Dictionary of Latin_ (2008):

------------------->
grūmus ‘heap of earth, hillock’ [m. o] (Acc.+)
Derivatives: dēgrūmare 'to level off (Enn,+).
  PIt. *grōmo- ‘heap’.
  PIE *h₂ǵr-ōm-o-. IE cognates: see s.v. gremium.

Lat. grumus could be connected with gremium < *grem- and OCS gramada
‘heap, pile’ < *grōm-. A preform *grōmos may have turned into grūmus
phonetically: the change of *ōm > ūm might also found in hūmānus
(see s.v. homō). The words that retain -ōm- either have a following
front vowel (abdōmen, nōmen, fōmes, mōmentum. tōmenium, ōmen, vōmer,
cōmis) or are due to a contraction of *o+e (pōmum, prōmus); the
only exception is Rōma. Thus, the raising of *ō in front of m may
require the additional condition of a following back vowel (no
exceptions) or non-front vowel (exception Rōma; but being a name,
this may have escaped the sound change). For the relevance of the
vowel in the next syllabe for the a vowel change, compare the change
*e > o /m,w _ CV[non-front] discussed by Schrijver 1991: 466-470.
Note also that the raising of *ē to Lat. ī is conditioned in a
similar way, viz. by -i- in the next syllable,
  Bibl.: WH I: 623, EM 283, IEW 376ff. → gremium
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Christian "naddy" Weisgerber                          naddy@mips.inka.de