Undercover with ípsət
What hidden history might there still be to uncover about Chinuk Wawa’s ípsət (‘hide; cover; secretly’)?
What we already know:
The 2012 Grand Ronde Tribes dictionary of CW, to which we owe an incalculable debt for the research Henry Zenk & company put in, reports to us that this word “apparently” comes from a (Lower) Chinookan imperative verb form with i- (3rd person masculine subject) and a root pšut.
I’ve previously shot down an idea that ípsət could have a Salish heritage instead or in addition to the preceding.
But today I’d like to make note of some additional, kinda intriguing data.
Tillamook Salish of the NW Oregon coast:
a stem ihg-(a•)dzit ~ ‘to hide oneself’
(Tillamook /h/ developed from historical /p/; the /dz/ is from earlier /ts/.)
K’alapuyan languages of inland NW Oregon:
a root ~(h)ip ‘hide/hidden’
(p. 782 in Volume 1 of the English-Kalapuya portion of Paul Stephen McCartney, Sr’s “The Kalapuya Dictionary), 2021
To say the least, languages of various families in the same little geographical area have quite similar forms for ‘hiding’.
