BUTCHER BahSahR Bet-Sin-Resh
bus-ARE בשר [BSR à BCHR]
ROOTS: BUTCHER is from Old French bouchier. In modern French boucher (butcher) echoes a fricative- like S, not a guttural like G. Nonetheless, the so-called IE “root” is guessed to be bhugo, absurdly meaning “a male animal.” Edenic has four etymons with better sound and sense.
1. בשר BaSaR means meat or "flesh” (Genesis 2:21). As seen in שאר SHi’AiR (Psalms 73:26, 78:20), the ש-ר Shin-Resh sub-root can mean flesh or food. Punic שאר SHi’AiR only means “flesh.” See "BURSAR" and "SARCASTIC.”
2. For an alternative with better music and meaning than the AHD’s source of BUCK (that tougher “male animal” above) , there’s בתר Ba(S)aR or BaTaR. It means to cut or divide (as the pieces of animal flesh in Genesis 15:10). Alternative etymons 3. and 4. below involve actions of the butcher, and lack only the final-Resh/R of what could be an –er suffix.
BRANCHES: The French meat seller is more likely a meat word, than an animal one. Similarly, the Spanish butcher, carnicero, is from carnal, meat terms, not animal ones. The Scandinavian “butcher” words similarly mean “slaughterer.” Apparently, cattlemen and butchers developed separate professions a long time ago.
English FLESH is from the German. German Fleisch (meat) has undergone a bilabial shift from ב Bet/ B to F, a liquid shift from ר Resh/ R to L, plus an M132 metathesis of בשר BaSaR (flesh).
Thirdly: The Hebrew butcher is a קצב QaTSaBH (a chopper -- Genesis 41:40), much like the Albanian and Turkish butcher, kasap. Lithuanian kapoti is to hew or chop, an M132 metathesis. Reversing the Bhet-Tsadi of the קצב QaTSaBH can sound like B-T-CH.
Fourthly: טבח DTaBHaK[H] means to slaughter cattle (Exodus 21:37); טבח DTaBHahK[H] is a butcher or cook. ט Tet/DT does not offer the CH in BUTCHER. But swap positions of the ב Bhet and ט Tet, and one gets BH-DT-K[H] or what easily becomes B-T-CH.
------------------------------an E-Word download is available at www.edenics.org by mid-Feb. 2013-------