{"word_count": 284, "character_count": 1891}
Written Tibetan (WT)&#160; སྒྲོ sgro means ‘large feather, tail feather, quill’, as in སྒྲོ་མདོངས sgro-mdongs ‘peacock’s feather, as a badge of dignity’ (Jäschke). Benedict (1972) compared this word with Jingpo shagrau [ʃă31kʒau31] ‘outer skin’, apparently taking outer skin (of fruits etc.) and bird feathers to be different kinds of organic coverings. Coblin (1986) preferred comparing WT sgro with OC 羽 ‘feather’, OC *gwjagx in the reconstruction of Li. Coblin’s proposal seems to provide better semantics than Benedict’s: for this reason it has enjoyed broader support. A third interpretation is proposed below.WT sgro སྒྲོ is a verb, meaning ‘to elevate, exalt, increase, exaggerate’. It is a homophone of the word for ‘large feather’.&#160; Compared with normal featers, tail feathers are increased in size, strikingly so in the case of the pheasant or peacock: a derivation out of the verb is likely. Probable external cognates are Jingpo shagrau [ʃă31kʒau33] ‘to praise, extol’ and OC 喬 *[N-k](r)aw &#62; gjew &#62; qiáo ‘lift, elevated, high’. In the phonetic series of 喬, one finds 鷮 *[k](r)aw &#62; kjew &#62; jiāo ‘kind of pheasant’, said by 郭璞 Guō Pú (276-324 CE) to have a long tail and whose feathers were used as ornaments.In yet another meaning, སྒྲོ sgro designates the bark of a species of willow; this, at least, is a good match for Benedict’s shagrau [ʃă31kʒau31] ‘outer skin’. There is no clear Chinese cognate.Despite superficial resemblance, WT གྲོ་བ gro-ba or གྲོ་ག gro-ga ‘the thin bark of the birch tree’ is distinct from the preceding: it is reduced from grog-ba (Guillaume Jacques, p.c. 2016).  &#160;WTOCJingpoincrease, elevateསྒྲོ sgro ‘elevate, exalt, increase, exaggerate’སྒྲོ sgro ‘large feather, tail feather’喬 *[N-k](r)aw‘lift, elevated, high’鷮 *[k](r)aw ‘kind of pheasant’ʃă31kʒau33 ‘to praise, extol’outer skin, barkསྒྲོ sgro&#160;ʃă31kʒau31 [cite]