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From: Ross Clark <benlizro@ihug.co.nz>
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Cadaver < lat. cadere?
Date: Sun, 18 May 2025 11:37:36 +1200
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
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On 18/05/2025 7:22 a.m., Christian Weisgerber wrote:
> Etymological dictionaries agree that the widely borrowed Latin
> "cadaver" derives from "cadere" 'to fall', but they gloss over the
> details.  Where's the -v- from?  I can't tell if this is simply
> obvious--if you actually know Latin, which I don't--or genuinely
> unknown.
> 
> Many perfect stems have -v-, but cadere has a reduplicating perfect,
> cecidi.  Also, the perfect -v- doesn't appear in participle stems,
> I think, which would be the most likely source to derive a noun
> from.
> 
> So how _is_ cadaver formed from cadere?
> 

So far as my resources can take me, nobody seems to know.
The relation with cadere is taken as given in my Lat-Eng dictionary, but 
OED says "perhaps".

But thank you for an excuse to get out my copy of Walde, Lateinisches 
Etymologisches Wörterbuch (1906) -- and pay tribute again to my old 
friend Gloria, who (with me in mind) rescued it from a skip (dumpster) 
outside the door of her neighbour, a recently deceased scholarly 
Anglican clergyman.

Yes, well:

cadāver, -eris "Leichnam": wohl P.P.A. "der Gefallene" zu cadābundus, 
cado (s.d.) (Vaniček 67, vgl. auch Schulze Qu.ep. 250 a 1). Bersus Gutt. 
170 abweichende Verbindung mit der in cadamitas (s. calamitas) 
vorliegenden Wz. von ai. kadanam "Vernichtung" u.s.w. ist 
unwahrscheinlich, da ein P.P.A.dazu nur "vernichtet habend" bedeuten 
würde und eine andere Auffassung des Suffixes aussteht.

I thought of one other Latin noun in -āver, namely papāver 'poppy', but 
it doesn't help much:

papāver, -eris 'Mohn': wohl ptc.pf.act. *papā-ṷes "aufgeblasen, 
aufgedunsen" (Bildung wie cadāver) zu Wz. *pap- "aufblasen" in pampinus, 
papula (Vaniček 154).