#523 PTB *g-duk DAYTIME / NOON

Regarding the current etymon, Jäschke 1881 shows an entry for WT gdugs, glossed as 1) ‘parasol, umbrella’ (in particular in Central Tibetan and Balti); also ‘canopy, baldochin’; and 2) (in elegant speech) ‘mid-day, noon’. The first of these glosses is quite well attested in relevant STEDT data for Tibetan dialects and certain other TB language groups, where the usual meaning of the reflex is ‘umbrella’, either as a single morpheme, or in compounds with morphemes indicating ‘sun’ or ‘rain’. On the other hand, the meaning ‘midday, noon’ or related notions is attested only infrequently, cf. WT tsha gdug ‘hot’, Pattani tog ‘sun’.

This situation suggests that the oldest senses of the related PTB etymon *g‑duk might termed COVERING / SHADE / SKY, with the notion of ‘sky’ as a kind of ‘covering’. Later, the semantic range of *g‑duk would have shifted to include ’sun’, the most prominent and easily sensed object in the sky. The resultant semantic flip-flop would be of a type occasionally seen elsewhere in Sino-Tibetan languages. On that assumption, a partial parallel could be found in the history of the English word ‘sky’ itself, which is cognate with the words ‘shade’ and ‘shadow’, and which had the meaning ‘cloud’ in Old and Middle English. Eventually, ‘sky’ came to mean ’region of the atmosphere viewed from earth’, i.e. whether sunny, clear, dark, or clouded over, in which senses it replaced the word ’heaven’. An additional parallel could be seen in English ‘roof’, which as Old English hrof could mean ‘top, summit; heaven, sky’ as well as ‘covering of an abode’.