Delving into the -lf of wolf.

About a week ago, I was telling my mother about that mysterious word *ulkʷos and its odd reflexes in the Indo-European languages in general, and Germanic languages especially.

She kindly pointed out to me that there aren't that many words in Dutch that end in -olf. And in fact there aren't even many word that end in -lf either. I compiled a list, which I expect to be near-complete list of non-compounds nouns that end in -lf.

I also looked for some words that would maybe display an alternation between -lf and -lk, which wasn't quite as successful. But l'll post the results and the etymologies of these words.

• kolf 'backside of a rifle'
  
• golf 'wave'
  
• kalf 'calf' ??
  
• half 'half'
  
• zalf 'salve' ?
  
• zelf 'self'
  
• elf 'eleven' (and also twaalf 'twelve')
  
• delven 'to delve'
  
• welven 'to gulf'
  

I'll discuss these words individually

kolf
I'm not sure what the etymology of this word is. These days it's the backside of a rifle the Middle Dutch meaning was 'stick, club, bat'. etymonline suggests a root *kulþ-. But I'm not sure how to get the f  out of that word, Dutch tends to change f's to ch, but doesn't get f's from þ (see luft > lucht. graft > gracht kraft > kracht).

golf
golf < French golfe < Italian golfo < late Latin colpus <Greek κολπος
So not a Germanic origin.

kalf
kalf < PGm. *kalbaz
Gothic has kalbo which is a *eh2-feminine stem of a root *kalb- it also means 'female calf'.
It is sometimes connected with PIE *gelb(h)- from a root *gel- 'to swell' , the swelling of an animal womb. I don't find this explanation particularly compelling. either way it's not important for the comparison to 'wolf'.

half
half < PGm *halbaz
It's connected with the Indo-European root *(s)kel- 'to split'. Quite convincing, Also 'scalp' is related to this word (this time with the presence of the s-mobile).

It's interesting to see scalp have a *p-suffix and half have a *b-suffix. the actually reason for this is really difficult to trace though. We'd obviously like to connect the two, but there's no real reason fur us to do so except for 'they sound alike and related words use them'.

zalf
From a Indo-European root *selp- 'butter, fat'.

zelf
From proto-Germanic selbaz 'self' from Indo-European *sel-bho- from the base *s(w)e- "separate, apart" is wat www.etymonline.com says, makes you wonder what this -l root suffix is though. Or the bho part, I myself am not sure.

elf
From Proto-Germanic *ain-lif. litterarely one-leave. The leaving part from PGm. laibijan 'to cause to remain/to leave' from PIE root *leikʷ- There we have one! A *kʷ > *p /R_. Where R = i,l (and likely then also u,r).

delven
Apparently from an Indo-European root *dhelbh- 'to dig'.

welven
From PGm. *hwelban From Indo-European *kʷelp- To wich also Gk. κολπος is directly related.

So now we have two words!  *leikʷ- and *ulkʷo- Which have a *kʷ > *p shift. Both in a similar environment.

We can hardly draw conclusions from this, but it was definitely worth checking out the -lf words, and seeing which words have a *kʷ > *p shift.

My next post, I'll work the other way around, and I'll look for roots that have *kʷ/*p switches.