ALTERNATIIVSEID ETÜMOLOOGIAID IX lets, marg, naber, mült, nurmik ja pugal

with the -ik suffix, of the noun nurm ’(grain)field; meadow, grassland’, which has previously been regarded as of dubious etymological origin. Analogous deriva - tions to nurmik are found in the Baltic languages as well. pugal : pugala ~ pugali ’multicolored, spotted (animal, bird) etc’ occurs throughout the Estonian language area. It lacks equivalents in other Finnic languages. Julius Mägiste has suggested that pugal may be a secondary, back-vowel variant of pügal ’notch, indent’, an explanation which has been accepted in later etymological literature with no reservations. Parallel existence of back-and front-vowel variants of the same stem is not unusual in Finnic languages, but in such cases the variants do not sharply diverge semantically (synchronically), nor does the etymological connection become blurred or even broken. Phonologi - cally and semantically suitable comparison material to Estonian pugal is found in dialectal Russian бугли́ть ’to make multicolored, variegated’, буго́ль f ’spot, fleck, speckle (in an animal’s fur)’. The etymological relationship between the Estonian and Russian words is not clear, i.e. the borrowing may have occurred in either direction.