Thomas Wier

Donald Rayfield's translation of ქარი ჰქრის 'The Wind Blows'

Rayfield's translation probably best captures the feeling of that work:

Autograph manuscript of the poem ქარი ჰქრის kari hkris 'the Wind Blows'

Galaktion Tabidze (1892-1958)

In Georgian literature, this old word becomes the centerpiece of Symbolist poet Galaktion Tabidze's famous poem ქარი ჰქრის Kari hkris 'the Wind Blows':

So it may be that this Kartvelian root *kar- wind is in fact an ancient loan from some Steppe language through semantic shift. Many words for wind come from a verb 'breathe':

Greek άνεμος < PIE *h₂enh₁- breathe
Ge'ez ነፋስ näfas < Semitic *napš- breath, spirit

If we allow for semantic shift to cold & ice with some suffixation, we find other Steppe language roots:

PIE *ḱers-no- hoarfrost: Old Norse hjarn, Latvian sȩ̄rsna
Altaic *k`ĭrma hoarfrost: Turkish kɨraɣu, Chuvash xǝrbǝx
Uralic *kerte thin snow: Finnish kerte, Khanty kȧrtǝɣ

So the root has clear Kartvelian bona-fides. However, even protolanguages borrow from other languages, and similar roots are found across Eurasia e.g. in Altaic and Dravidian:

Old Turkic qalɨq sky
Dolgan kallān sky
Kannada gāḷ wind
Telugu gāli wind
Konda gāli wind

The word may have originally been not a noun but a verb, as its cognates in sister lgs form verb stems:

Megrelian გონქირაფა gonkirapa to disappear
Svan ადქარუე adkarwe he lost

If so, the idea of 'wind' is derived from this more general verbal set of meanings.

It is first attested in the earliest Georgian work, the Martyrdom of Queen Shushanik, dating to 476: ჟამსა ზაფხულისასა ცეცხლებრ შემწუელი იგი მჴურვალებაჲ მზისაჲ, ქარნი ხორშაკნი და წყალნი მავნებელნი 'During summer, fiery burning of the sun, searing winds and torrential waters'

a wind-blown tree

Weekly Georgian Etymology: ქარი kari 'wind', from Old Georgian ႵႠႰႨ kari, from Proto-Kartvelian *kar- wind, to blow, poss. an ancient Steppe loanword: Altaic *găl- sky, wind, Dravidian *gāḷ- wind, air. Made famous in the poem by Galaktion Tabidze, ქარი ჰქრის 'The Wind Blows'.

Something similar probably happened to bazhe sauce, which gets its name metaphorically for the rich 'tax' or 'duty' used to make walnut paste with garlic, salt, vinegar, fenugreek, coriander, marigold and red pepper:

For example, the famous melange of stewed vegetables called ajapsandali, which in Ottoman Turkish literally means 'marvelous barge' receives its name as a metaphor for the surprise awaiting hungry diners:

But it also represents a difference between eastern and western Georgia in how they named their dishes. Here, dishes are named not just by their ingredients or preparation, but often with more poetic or jocular names, as was the case in nearby Ottoman Turkey.

This probably reflects how early Georgian cookbooks reflected the tastes and traditions of eastern Georgian food culture of Kartli and Kakheti, where the Georgian language and its idioms are dominant. Here people simply didn't use the Megrelian word for similar sauces.

Satsivi chicken dish made with bazhe

Feminist author and gastronomic anthropologist Princess Barbare Jorjadze, author of the famous 1874 'Georgian Cookery'

All scholars agree that the classic Georgian bazhe sauce, made from walnuts, garlic and vinegar, is in origin a Megrelian sauce, hailing from western Georgia. Despite its importance, it not attested until the 20th century -- it is not e.g. found in Barbare Jorjadze's 1874 famous cookbook.

Weekly Georgian Etymology: ბაჟე baže 'walnut sauce with garlic', from Megrelian ბაჟა baža, from Georgian ბაჟი baži toll, duty, tax, from Old Georgian ႡႠႯႨ baži, from Middle Persian bāǰ tax, from Old Persian 𐎲𐎠𐎪𐎶 tribute. It gets its name metaphorically from its enriched flavor.

In Georgian cuisine, a ketsi is a commonplace part of meals for cooking and serving mushrooms, cheese, chicken and other kinds of stews. Here for example is the famous Shkmeruli dish, made from fried chicken in a bath of milk, garlic and other spices:

Such word-boundary reanalysis is common in unfamiliar loanwords. Just think of English 'orange', which comes ultimately from Arabic نَارَنْج nāranj, but where the initial /n/ was along the way reanalyzed not as part of the noun but as part of the article: *a norange > an orange.

Did Kartvelian borrow this word from Nakh-Daghestanian, or vice-versa? This is hard to tell, because ND sound-changes are so poorly understood. A plausible scenario is that Kartvelian borrowed ND *kɨ̄ṭV- and reanalyzed it based on following case suffixes:

*ket-sa (DAT) > kec-sa

Because the word is found in Svan with regular sound-reflexes, we can surely reconstruct it to Proto-Kartvelian. But even protolanguages borrowed words, and Nakh-Daghestanian broadly features this root across subfamilies, indicating its antiquity there:

Man standing next to a kvevri, or subterranean wine amphora

As this shows, the word could originally refer to a wide variety of clay-fired stoneware, still reflected in the Svan meaning:

Megrelian კიცი ḳici clay pan
Laz კიცი ḳici clay pan
Svan კეც ḳec wine amphora, kvevri

Zan *e regularly shifts to /i/ before coronal obstruents.

The word is first used in the context not of food but for drinking wine: ანტლეტერეონი ღჳნისა ამოსაღებელად არს ტარი გრძელი ვითარცა ჭაშაში სიღრმისათჳს კეცისა მის ღჳნისა ამოსაღებელად 'An antletereon is a long handle for ladling wine, just as one ladles to the bottom of a chalice'

Fried sulguni cheese in a ketsi (stoneware platter)

Weekly Georgian Etymology: კეცი ḳeci 'ceramic pan', from Old Georgian ႩႤႺႨ ḳeci wine vessel, from Proto-Kartvelian *ḳec- ceramic vessel, loan from/into Nakh-Daghestanian *kɨ̄ṭV- vessel: cf. Chechen kad pot, Tsez ḳoṭi cup, Udi kot:o-war pan. Ancient pan-Caucasian Wanderwort.

So this word ლეკვი leḳvi puppy ultimately is connected not only to more familiar words like English wolf, Latin lupus, and Russian волк, it is also indirectly related to the name of Georgia itself.

This is because Middle Persian gurg became the base of Gurgistan, which was folk-etymologized in Greek to Georgia:

Thomas Wier on X: "Weekly Georgian Etymology: ვახტანგი Vaxṭangi, man's personal name. From Scythian *warx-tang 'wolf-bodied', from Indo-Iranian *wŕ̥kas wolf & *tanúHs body, from PIE *wĺ̥kʷos & *tenuh₂-. Name of many Georgian kings, it reflects the totemic role of wolves in the ancient Caucasus. https://t.co/PA7bqfuF5O" / X Weekly Georgian Etymology: ვახტანგი Vaxṭangi, man's personal name. From Scythian *warx-tang 'wolf-bodied', from Indo-Iranian *wŕ̥kas wolf & *tanúHs body, from PIE *wĺ̥kʷos & *tenuh₂-. Name of many Georgian kings, it reflects the totemic role of wolves in the ancient Caucasus. https://t.co/PA7bqfuF5O

Another interesting side-note is that because the Old Persian form 𐎺𐎼𐎣⁠ vr̥kaʰ evolved into Middle Persian ⁠gurg, this also became the exonymous form used to describe Georgia for outsiders because of its ancient wolf-cult:
x.com/thomas_wier/...

Several Indo-European branches featured an L-initial form for wolf, including Hellenic, Italic and Paeonian, a poorly attested Paleo-Balkan language. So it may have been a feature of that region's IE languages. Other IE words often preserved the initial *w:

Wolf puppies

The word is in turn a loan from a late Indo-European form *lúkʷos, whose metathesis probably reflects some kind of taboo deformation: across languages, it is common for speakers to alter a taboo word for wild animals. Cf. Slavic медведь for bear, lit. 'honey-eater'.

The word is surely reconstructed back to Georgian-Zan by regular sound-laws:

Geo ლეკვი leḳvi
Megr ლაკვი laḳvi
Laz ლაკი laḳi

In Zan languages, *e regularly shifts to /a/, while the Laz form comes from loss of /v/ before /o/ in ლაკოტი leḳoṭi 'little puppy'. Svan lacks this cognate.

Though attested already in the late 10th century, its most famous use comes from Rustaveli's 12th century Knight in the Tiger Skin in a line proverbially famous to every Georgian:

ლეკვი ლომისა სწორია, ძუ იყოს, თუნდა ხვადია
A lion's cub is still a lion, be it male or female

Two Caucasian Shepherd puppies

Weekly Georgian Etymology: ლეკვი leḳvi 'puppy', from Old Georgian ႪႤႩႥႨ leḳvi, from Georgian-Zan *leḳw-, an ancient loan from Indo-European *lúkʷos, metathesis of *wĺ̥kʷos 'wolf': cf. Greek λύκος, Proto-Italic *lukʷos. It is thus cognate to English wolf and Latin lupus.

This idea of a 'leaf-comb' is not unique to Kartvelian, as it is found in other languages:

Arabic مِشْط mišṭ comb or rake
Welsh cribin rake, from crib 'comb'

And in Nakh-Daghestanian lgs, *q:ʷa(n)ṭa means broom, rake in some lgs, but comb in others.