"Five" in In Glory Like Their Star [Digest
The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 09 Oct 2001
https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2832

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James Jordan — 09 Oct 2001, 16:24

> At 04:20 PM 10/9/2001 -0400, you wrote:
> The PIE for "five" is *penkwe, not *pan
> 
> The PIE for "all" is *pan or *pant.
> 
> I don't have my references here, but I believe
> the two are distinct.
> 
>         -John

Hmmm. I'm no expert here at all, but I happened to be listening to a series 
of lectures on the History of the English Language from The Teaching 
Company, and the speaker said that "five" and "all" (pn and pn) were 
basically the same.That's what jogged my dim memory. I don't recall if 
that's because of the number of digits in a hand.  At any rate, the real 
question is what Wolfe thought, given the way he likes to trade on 
etymologies, and this explanation is all I've come up with that begins to 
make sense. I guess somebody could ask Wolfe, but he'd probably just smile....

Jim Jordan

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