ИСТИНА

The connections between terms for woods and bordering territories are well attested among various Indo-European languages. Here we can see OIr. fid, OW gwýdd, OHG witu, Lith. mẽdis, OPrus. median, all meaning ‘tree’, and Russ. mežá ‘border between fields’, meždu ‘between’; Lith. viduryjè ‘in medio’ and vidùs ‘internal, central’, OIr. mide (meaning both ‘centre’ and a certain territory in the centrаl part of Ireland) linked through the semantic development of the term from that meaning ‘wildland’ towards a ‘bordering, medial territory’. In the case of Celtic, it can be connected, from one side, through PIE *med-tu, *medhios, from which PCelt. *medo- ‘measure’; or PCelt. *widu- ‘wood’, comp. Lat. dīṷido (though the latter is disputed). From the other side, it can be traced back even to *wēdu- ‘wild’, comp. OIr fíad ‘(uncultivated) land’, MW gwydd ‘wild’ etc. Though etymological connection between the aforesaid roots and terms is a matter of discussion, different languages and traditions clearly show us the same development of meanings in the same direction, namely, from ‘wild, forested land’ to borderland, enclosure (and what it is made of, mainly wood) and than to enclosed settlement itself. Some examples are OIr. gort ‘field, territory’, Wels. garth, Lat. hortus, Eng. fort, TochB warto- ‘forest’ (!); MIr. farr ‘post’ (part of a fence?) and Fr. varenne ‘wilderness’ (possibly from *warro-); also OIs. mǫrk, meaning both ‘border’ and ‘wood’, etc. The proposed paper runs through different terms connected with wildlands, borders and enclosures in the specified language groups, concentrating mainly on Celtic languages, and explores their possible connections by both semantic links and etymology.