moosa

Hopi

Etymology

From Proto-Uto-Aztecan *musa (“wildcat”), with the meaning shifted to "domestic cat" under the influence of Spanish mizo (“(domestic) cat”) (resulting in the empty semantic space for "wildcat" being filled by the Ute loanword tokotsi).[1] Compare Classical Nahuatl miztli (“puma”).

Noun

moosa (plural moomost)

  1. domestic cat (animal)
    Imosa tooki nuy qa puwna
    My cat didn't let me sleep last night

References

  1. ^ 1998, Kenneth C. Hill, Spanish loanwords in Hopi, in The Life of Language: Papers in Linguistics in Honor of William Bright (edited by Jane H. Hill, P. J. Mistry, Lyle Campbell), page 22

Further reading

  • A Concise Hopi and English Lexicon (→ISBN, 1985)
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