Read an article, by George Thomspon, called "Soma and Ecstasy in the Rgveda," in the current Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies, and one sentence sent me to the dictionaries. "As for [hymn] 10.119 itself, Falk's argument against its depicting visionary or ecstatic experience is based on the claim that the hymn describes the experience of Indra, or at least of Indra in the guise of a bird [labá], probably a lapwing — rather than the experience of a human being who is 'in the intoxication of Soma' [cf. sómasya of the hymn's refrain in light of the formula sómasya máde, as well as its variants]." Does the Sanskrit word laba mean lapwing or quail as Monier-Williams' suggests. Well, a long story short, lapwing in German is Kiebitz which may be of the origin of the Yiddish verb kibetsn which gives us to kibbitz. On the assumption that the word is onomatopoeic and that kibbitzing meant something like making the sound pewit as the lapwing does in English. Though, Kluge's listed a verb kiebitschen 'visitieren' and traced it to Rotwelsch instead of Jiddisch. And that took me to a wonderful German conceptual language-art website. I had also misremembered the opening lines of Nabokov's Pale Fire as having to do with a lapwing instead of a waxwing (being unfamiliar with both birds, though the lapwing seems similar to the killdeer) &mdash shame on me. The French call the lapwing colloquially dix-huit and formally vanneau huppé which first word is related to the genera name Vannellus and which second word has something to do with the Latin upupa 'hoopoe' which is another bird altogether.
Posted by jim at August 17, 2003 12:43 PMIn Egyptian the lapwing is called rxyt and represents the "teeming masses."
Sir Richard Burton apparently derived "roc" from this glyph:
...I may remind the reader that the O. Egyptian "Rokh," or "Rukh," by some written "Rekhit," whose ideograph is a mostroud bird with one claw raised, also denots pure wise Spirits, the Magi, &c. I know a man who derives from it our "rook"=beak and parson.But needless to say, this is rubbish. (Presumably his claim that it represents "pure wise spirits" derives from the fact that "to know" is rx in Egyptian) Posted by: Justin on September 14, 2003 09:17 AM