doiSerbia

Why do first kittens end up down the drain?: An iconic meaning of the lexema cat and litter II

Bašić Ivana S. (Institut za srpski jezik SANU, Beograd)

In the Slavic folklore, a cat and similar other small animals with soft fur and numerous litters/offspring, represent symbols of a young female, bride, woman, female genitals, home and hearth, appearing thus in fertility rituals, connected with food, knitting, weaving, and magic, but they are also associated with female demons, such as „devour-eaters“, „child and harvest stealers“. All these are the characteristics of the Great Mother Goddess, in her terrifying, chthonic appearance. This paper points out to a possibility that the lexema cat [mačka in Serbian language] originated from the basis of mat- (in Serbian language: mati, majka, in English language: mom, mother): the motivation basis for the both expression/ word for cat/litter (in Serbian language: mačka/kot) could be connected with a representation of female genitals (womb, in Sebian language: materica), birthing, understood here as “expulsion”, and “unfold” of the large number of offspring. Actually, those are the meanings of the verb

Keywords: cat, litter, Mara, Slavic mythology, lexical iconic meaning, phrases, sacrifice of the first born