Talk:хлеб

@Cinemantique, Wikitiki89, Atitarev I split this based on decl. Not sure where to put the figurative meaning "living"; I assume it's an extension of "bread" not "grain". Benwing2 (talk) 08:06, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

Russian: Etymology

The Russian word хлеб (hleb) might just as well come from Greek μαχλέπι (mahlepi), and thereon from w:en:Mahleb:

In Greek-American cooking, it is the characteristic flavoring of Christmas cake and pastry recipes. In Greece, it is called μαχλέπι (mahlepi), and is used in egg-rich yeast cakes and cookies, such as Christmas vasilopita and Easter tsoureki breads. [...] In Egypt, powdered mahlab is made into a paste with honey, sesame seeds and nuts, eaten as a dessert or a snack with bread.

The whole paragraph is rather informative.

The idea is, that Greece (through the Byzantine Empire) and Russia (Kievan Rus') have historically had closer ties in the distant past, and I think it possible, that the Greek mahlepi was then adopted as a word in Russia (in Old Russian). I'm not a linguist, but one should find out, if the Greek words μαχλέπι, the Turkish mahlep and the Arabic mahlab were in use during that era. -Mardus (talk) 03:39, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

There is no reason for the ma- to have disappeared and the vowel would have been е/ё in old Russian rather than ѣ. If you look at the entry for Proto-Slavic *xlěbъ, you will see that it has regular reflexes in most Slavic languages, so the idea that it was borrowed into Russian from Greek at a later period is much less likely. --WikiTiki89 15:43, 8 March 2016 (UTC)