cimds

From Proto-Baltic *kimdas (possibly conserved for a while in Lithuanian, but later lost), an old word, widely borrowed into Baltic-Finnic languages: compare Finnish kinnas (genitive kintaan), Estonian kinnas (genitive kinda), Veps kindas, kindaz, Livonian kindas, k’indaz. Some researchers derive *kimdas from an old Proto-Baltic verb *kimti (“to press, to shove, to thrust”), from Proto-Baltic *kim-, from the zero grade *km̥- of Proto-Indo-European *kem- (“to press together; to hinder, to hamper”); the original meaning of cimds would be, in this case, “that in which one shoves one's hands,” or “that which presses one's hands.” Others, however, derive cimds from Proto-Baltic *šim- (with the expected Latvian reflex *sim- changing to *cim- via original or dialectal variation, as with, e.g., saukt : kaukt), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱem- (“to cover”) (whence German Hemd). It is possible that Proto-Indo-European *kem- and *ḱem- were variants of a single stem, with differentiated semantics.