Ahvatlema
"Ahvatlema"

Summary/Abstract: The Estonian verb ahvatlema ‘to entice, to lure; to tempt, to seduce’ has been a subject of etymological research for over two centuries, yet no convincing explanation of its origin has been reached. In this word study, I propose a new etymology. ahvatlema belongs to a large word family with three stem variants: the standard-language ahvata- and avata-, and the dialectal ahata-. Previous etymological treatments of the verb stem have failed to account for the variation in the stem consonants, while the variant ahata- has been excluded from consideration altogether. The Estonian verb and its derivatives have been compared with phonologically similar but semantically mostly unconnected stems from the northern Finnic languages, e.g. Finnish ahvatti, ahvatta, ahvattu, ahvakas, ahvakka ‘greedy, ravenous; eager, keen (to do something); diligent, industrious’, Karelian ahvakko, ahvatta, and Veps ahvak ‘greedy, ravenous, eager’. I propose that ahvatlema and its variants are borrowings from the dialectal form охвóта [ofo∙ta / afo∙ta] of the Russian noun охóта, widespread in northern and north-western Russia, meaning ‘wish, desire, longing, will (to do something), inclination, propensity; hunting’. In loanwords, Russian internal хв [hv ~ f], вC [fC], and ф [f] have been replaced with hv, h, or v, and in later borrowings also with f; the stem ahvata- reflects the variants hv ~ h ~ v. The primary stress has, as expected, shifted to the first syllable, and the stressed o in the following syllable has been replaced by a. The borrowed stem has been adapted to Estonian -ta verbs with the causative meaning ‘a wish or desire to induce or encourage someone to do something’. The further derivative ahvat(e)lema ~ avat(e)lema ~ ahatlema, formed with the productive frequentative suffix -(e)le-, carries the same meaning. The Russian dialectal form охвóта and its derivative охвóтник ‘enthusiast, amateur, volunteer (in military service), hunter’ have been recorded as parallel loanwords in all northern Finnic languages. The Russian etymology makes it possible to explain straightforwardly the consonantal variation in the Estonian verb stem. Semantically, ahvatlema corresponds far more convincingly to the proposed loan source than to the ahmama–ahmima word family.

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