An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language, K (1891)
by Friedrich Kluge, translated by John Francis Davis
Kot
Friedrich Kluge2511905An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language, K — Kot1891John Francis Davis

Kot (1.), Kote, f., ‘cot’; prop. a LG. word; LG. kote, kot, Du. kot, ‘hut’; corresponding to AS. cot, n., and cote, f., ‘hut’; from the former E. cot is derived (E. cottage is the same word with a Rom. suffix; comp. MidLat. cotagium, OFr. cotage), from the latter came cote in dove-cote and sheep-cote, comp. Scand. kot, n., ‘small farm.’ Goth. *kut, n., or *kutô, f., is wanting. The widely ramified class is genuinely Teut., and passed into Slov. (OSlov. kotĭcĭ, ‘cella’) and Kelt. (Gael. cot). Rom. words have also been derived from it — ModFr. cotte, cotillon, Ital. cotta, all of which denote some article of dress, though this sense does not belong to the Teut. word (E. coat, at all events, is probably derived from Rom.). The Teut. word means only ‘apartment, hut, room of a house’; gudo- is perhaps the pre-historic form. — Kotsasse, also by assimilation Kossasse, Kossat, Kotse, ‘person settled in a small farm’; also spelt Kötter.

Kot (2.) m., ‘dirt, mire, dung,’ from the equiv. MidHG. kôt, quât, kât, n., OHG. quât; Goth. *qêda-, ‘dirt,’ is wanting. Prop. neut. adj.; MidG. quât, ModDu. kwaad, ‘wicked, ugly, rotten’ (MidE. cwêd, ‘bad’). Unflat and Unrat are in the same way veiled terms for stercus. In its pre-Teut. form guêtho, Kot might be related by gradation to Ind. gûtha, Zend gûtha, ‘dirt, excrementa,’ so that the Teut. subst. may have been formed from the adj. even in prehistoric times; the Sans. and Zend word seems, however, to be connected with the Ind. root gu, ‘caccare’ (OSlov. govĭno, n., ‘dirt’).