Reconstructions

Note

Also Kapampangan búluʔ ‘fine hair on stalk of sugarcane, very itchy’; miki-búluʔ ‘fuzzy’, Ngaju Dayak buloi ‘pubic hair’, Simalur bulu kuciŋ ‘plant with blossoms that resemble the whiskers of a cat’ (probably a Malay loan), Old Javanese wulyan, wuŋlwan, wuŋlon ‘kind of hairy fruit and its tree: Nephelium, rambutan’, Javanese bulu-bulu ‘feather duster; decorative feathers on female headdresses’, Sasak buluʔ ‘having hair, hairy’, ke-buluʔ iduŋ ‘a blue flycatcher which also eats caterpillars: Hypothymis occipitalis Vig.’, Bare'e bulu sumi ‘moustache consisting of a few stiff hairs, as with the whiskers of a cat, or with some people’ (Buginese loan); wujua ‘head hair’, Buruese folo-n ‘hair, feather, fur’. This word contrasted with *buhek ‘head hair’ in designating all types of body hair, including facial hair (e.g. eyelashes, eyebrows, moustache), the downy feathers of birds and chickens (as opposed to e.g. the tail feathers), the fur of animals, the fine floss on fruits and the stems of plants, and the hair-like appendages on some roots.

In addition, PMP *bulu also functioned as the general term for ‘color; type, kind’, as evidenced by reflexes in Malagasy, Iban, Old Javanese, Sasak, Mandar and Makassarese, Rennellese, Nukuoro and Hawaiian (cp. the similar usage in the English expression ‘birds of a feather flock together’,). The similar use of a reflex of *bulu to describe a dirty-white or mousy coloration in horses both in Sasak and in Makassarese must be a product of contact, just as Simalur enáe bulu aeam ‘fish sp.’, Sichule bulu ayam ‘fish sp.’ appear to be borrowings of Malay ikan bulu ayam, ikan belayam ‘small anchovy-like fish, Makasar red fish: Stolephorus sp., Coilia spp., Engraulia spp.’. Finally, the nasal coda in Sika wulu-ŋ ‘body hair, fur, feathers’ probably is the general grammatical marker -ŋ in Sika, rather than a reflex of *-n.