ACD - Austronesian Comparative Dictionary Online

*hizaw fighting cock with greenish feathers on light background

PWMP hizaw fighting cock with greenish feathers on light background ⇫ ¶

WMP
Tagalog	híraw	white-feathered rooster with green or greenish spots or edgings
Iban	ijau	dark colors on yellow or white (of fighting cocks)
Malay	hijau	dark-colored; a name given to greens and blues, as the prevailing color in the jungle and the sea

Reconstructions

PWMP

hizaw

fighting cock with greenish…

Note

Also Ngaju Dayak hijau ‘green, unripe’, Malagasy ma-itsu ‘green’, Iban ijau ‘green, (of leaves) healthy deep green’, Acehnese ijo ‘blue’, Karo Batak (h)ijo ‘light blue (as the sky)’, Toba Batak ijo ‘green’, Simalur ijao-ijao ‘green’, Rejang ijo ‘green, blue (of sea, sky)’, Sundanese héjo, ijo ‘green’, Old Javanese hijo, ma-hijo ‘green, blue’, Javanese ijo ‘green’, Balinese ijo ‘green’, Sasak éjo, ijo ‘green’, Sangir ido ‘green’, Buginese ijo ‘green’, Makassarese ijo ‘green’, Manggarai ijo ‘green’.

Dempwolff (1934-38) compared both Tagalog híraw (above) and hiláw ‘uncooked; green, unripe’ with Malay hijau and the related forms in Ngaju Dayak, Malagasy, and Javanese, but it is now clear that Tagalog hiláw reflects earlier *hilaw ‘raw, unripe’. However, the comparison of Tagalog híraw with the words for ‘green’ in other languages also presents difficulties (e.g. Old Javanese hijo points to PWMP *q-, whereas Tagalog híraw points to PWMP *h-). Although this comparison probably will continue to provoke debate in the future, it appears most likely to me that *hizaw underwent a semantic change in Malay and was then borrowed widely in the context of trading activities, replacing reflexes of PAn *mataq ‘green, blue’ over much of western Indonesia.