puškant(i)-

The word is a hapax legomenon occurring only in a letter from Tutḫaliya IV to the Assyrian king Tukultī-Ninurta I.

[E.R.]

Checked against the photographs in the Mainzer Fotoarchiv.

[E.R.]

The context and the relationship with puškantatar ‘aloofness(?), unfriendliness(?)’ (see under Stem) suggests the meaning ‘aloof (?), unfriendly (?)’. Building on the same relationship, HEG P:673 proposes alternatively ‘bösartig, böswillig’, CLL:226 ‘miserly’, while CHD P:400 strangely gives no translation (see, in each case, the corresponding translations for the abstract noun).

[E.R.]

According to Hagenbuchner 1989a:280, this lemma is a substantive in the nom. sg. Several scholars, however, consider it an adjective, since the absence of the LÚ determinative would be challenging for a noun: the latter therefore remains the best option.

[E.R.]

1. puškantatar

Puhvel (HED P:142) thinks that this lemma is a “Luwoid” participle of the iterative verb puške/a-, derivative of the Hittite verb pūš-^(mi) ‘to diminish, to fade, to be eclipsed’ (see also EDHIL:683), which should have connection with the IE stem *ph₂eu̯- ‘little’ (from which Lat. paucus, Gr. παῦρος), but this is very tentative and the semantic and phonological development (*-sk̑é/o- > -ške/a- instead of CLuw. -zza-) would be quite unaccounted for. The decisive argument for listing the lexeme here is the derivational relationship with puškantatar, which is classified as Luwian.

[E.R.]

*This lemma was written together with the trainee Marco Ammazzini.