Three Russian Words.

In flipping through my Russian edition of Vasmer’s Etymological Dictionary, I occasionally run across words that strike me as odd or intriguing in one way or another, and I thought I’d share a few of them here. 1) уй (or вуй) ‘maternal uncle.’ This is from Proto-Slavic *ujь, which goes back to that fine old Indo-European root *h₂éwh₂os ‘maternal grandfather; maternal uncle,’ from which we get Latin avus ‘grandfather’ and avunculus ‘maternal uncle,’ Old Irish aue ‘grandson,’ Armenian հավ (hav) ‘grandfather,’ and others. You can see why it dropped out of use in Russian — it’s dangerously similar to The Worst Word in the Language. 2) страфил(ь), the “mother of all birds” (мать всех птиц) in the Dove Book (Голубиная книга). This is thought to be an alteration of Greek στρουθοκάμηλος ‘ostrich.’ It’s good to have a word for ‘mother of all birds’ should you need one. 3) исто ‘kidney,’ gen. истесе, used in the dual истесѣ to mean ‘balls.’ I’m not sure why this is even in Vasmer, since it’s…