Proto-North Caucasian: *sħwǝ̆mḳ_V ( ~ -ʕ-)
Meaning: mushroom, tinder
Notes: Reconstructed for the PEC level. An interesting root, attested in EC, Kartvelian and IE. The PK form is *soḳo-, see Klimov 1964, 165 (with a variant zoḳo- in Georgian: the voiced z- shows that the original source of at least this variant in Kartvelian could have been Tsezian). From Georgian the word was borrowed into some Caucasian languages: back into some Tsezian (e.g., Gunz. zoḳo; see above), Bacb. zoḳŏ, Osset. zoḳo. Despite Klimov (ibid.), however, Arm. sunk: can not be explained as a loan from Kartvelian, but has rather an Indo-European etymology (see below).
In Indo-European we have *spongo- (see WP 2, 681-682) 'sponge, mushroom, tinder'; some authors (see ibid.) even try to reconstruct a complicated protoform *sphwongo- (to explain, beside Greek spóngo-s, Arm. sunk: also forms like Germ. *swamba- and Slav. *gõba). We must note that however improbable it seems, the form *sphwongo- lies very close to the reconstructed PEC *sħwǝ̆mḳ_V.
