Roobas – muinasteede kirjeldaja
Roobas – a word describing the condition of ancient roads

Summary/Abstract: The aim of the article is to demonstrate that the Estonian word roobas ~ rööbas associates with a numerous family of descriptive words belonging to a common Finnic tradition, a family that owes its considerable growth to morphological and semantic derivation. It is indicated that the semantic difference, so far considered a practically insurmountable obstacle in the way to associating the Estonian examples with those occurring in the Northern Finnic group, is but superficial as proved by an analysis of the older and less transparent semantic layers of the word family. This analysis includes, inter alia, a description of primitive roads and the respective means of transport. Supportive points are also sought and found in the respective vocabulary and lexical developments observed in neighbouring languages.

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