An Etymological Note on YAv. mūra-: Is it Really “Idiot, Stupid, Foolish”?

The present contribution is a first step of an ongoing investigation on the conceptualisation of ‘stupidity, foolishness, madness’ in Iranian, as a selected case-study for an assessment of the controversial role played by phonosemantic/ideophonic paradigms in lexical production and areal diffusion of cognate words.1 The discussion will challenge the commonly-accepted interpretation of the Young Avestan term mūra- as prototypically referring to mental/cognitive impairment, based on a review of the attempts at etymological reconstruction and a closer scrutiny of disregarded evidence from Middle and New Iranian.