The Origin of Old Prussian Dūrai
The Origin of Old Prussian Dūrai

Summary/Abstract: The Old Prussian adjective dūrai ‘shy’ is traditionally connected with the Slavic family of *durь (Russian дýрь ‘stupidity’) and *durъnъ (Russian дурнóй, Polish durny ‘silly, stupid’). But the formal and semantic relationships between these two lexical families still remain obscure. The aim of this paper is to elucidate the origin of Old Prussian dūrai and particularly to motivate its derivation from a root ‘to sting, to prick’ reflected by Lithuanian dùrti. It can be suggested that this derivation is based on a phraseological expression nudùrti aki̇̀s į̇̃ žẽmę ‘to look down to the ground’ used as a sign of psychological difficulty.

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