It's only taken me a year but

…I’ve just realised the Welsh agor “open” and English agoraphobia “fear of open spaces” are probably, you know, related… :embarrassed smiley:

Sounds like an excellent investment of that year…:wink:

Good catch! Hmm… I wonder if the same holds for ‘cau’ & ‘claustrophobia’, too!

Good grief. That one passed me by completely… !

I really hate to do this, but…it looks like it is probably just coincidence.

I have no Latin and less Greek, but from other sources-
Whatever the meaning of “agoraphobia” now, it is based etymologically on the idea of a fear of crowded, public spaces.
Thus it is from the Greek word “agora” for a market place, through the Latin.
This seems to be from a PI root word “ger”, to “assemble together”.

The word “agor” in Welsh means to open, and seems (according to John Morris Jones) to be from “an”, negative, plus “cor”, a root word meaning “to enclose” which pops up in other words in Welsh, as it were, and the “n” of the negative disappearing for obscure, rather boring rules!
That is, “to unenclose”.

Of course, no one can be sure of these things, and my knowledge of the etymology of both words is still very shaky, and It is a very reasonable thing to assume, which I did it myself until I came upon this stuff by accident in obscure writings! (Not that that implies it’s reasonable, just sayin’…)

I can’t copy the sheep smilie without losing what I’ve written, so please just imagine one here - [sheep smilie. Imagining, for the purposes of.]

It looks like “claustrophobia” could well be related to “clo”, though!

@Lurch

Yeah…you definitely ruined that eureka moment… :wink:

Claustrophobia is made up of a Latin word (claustrum) and a Greek (phobia), so a link between clo - lock and claustrum (related to clavus - key) is in theory more likely than between agor and agora, considering the strong and ancient influence of Latin on Welsh. Neither Henry Lewis nor Samuel James Evans mention either word in their books, not that that means it is not possible that they are related.

Ohhhh that makes so much more sense. Was wondering why I hadn’t seen any more really obvious cognates! let’s revise, shall we? It’s only taken me a year, but… I’ve finally found a way to remember the difference between ‘agor’ and ‘cau’ :slight_smile:

Louis van erkert said :Claustrophobia is made up of a Latin word (claustrum) and a Greek (phobia), so a link between clo - lock and claustrum (related to clavus - key) is in theory more likely than between agor and agora, considering the strong and ancient influence of Latin on Welsh.

Indeed. It in some ways depends on whether “clo” in Welsh is derived from the IE rather than Latin “Clavus”.
The Geiriadur Prifysgol gives it’s widest meanings as being lock or bolt.
It’s a widespread root for meaning “bar, bolt” in IE languages, so may well be from either!
Tend towards a borrowing from Latin myself, but any further thoughts more than welcome!