STEDT Etymon #5857
3.0 Natural Objects, Plants, Foods > 3.1 Plants > 3.1.4 Seeds and flowers, nuts
#5857 PTB *b-ra BUCKWHEAT (provisional) |
Tibetan dialects show weakening of the suffix WT bo and its eventual fusion with the lexemic stem WT bra, along with the separate shift of initial consonant cluster WT br‑ > tʂ‑.
May be an allofam of #5858 PTB *m‑grwa WHEAT / BUCKWHEAT.
麥 OC *mwɛk, GSR #932a ‘wheat’; Schuessler 2007:374 *mrək < ST *m‑rə(k); B & S 2011: *mə‑rˁək (dial. › *mrˁək); Mand. mài.
Schuessler 2007:374 traces 麥 *mrək to ST *m‑rə(k), and further compares it with WT bra bo ‘buckwheat’.