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Indo-European Lexicon

PIE Etymon and IE Reflexes

Below we display: a Proto-Indo-European (PIE) etymon adapted from Pokorny, with our own English gloss; our Semantic Field assignment(s) for the etymon, linked to information about the field(s); an optional Comment; and Reflexes (derived words) in various Indo-European languages, organized by family/group in west-to-east order where Germanic is split into West/North/East families and English, our language of primary emphasis, is artificially separated from West Germanic. IE Reflexes appear most often as single words with any optional letter(s) enclosed in parentheses; but alternative full spellings are separated by '/' and "principal parts" appear in a standard order (e.g. masculine, feminine, and neuter forms) separated by commas.

Reflexes are annotated with: Part-of-Speech and/or other Grammatical feature(s); a short Gloss which, especially for modern English reflexes, may be confined to the oldest sense; and some Source citation(s) with 'LRC' always understood as editor. Keys to PoS/Gram feature abbreviations and Source codes appear below the reflexes; at the end are links to the previous/next etyma [in Pokorny's alphabetic order] that have reflexes.

Fans of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings may appreciate the source & meaning tips that pop up when the mouse pointer hovers over a non-obvious word or name that he coined from Indo-European (usually Old English or Old Norse) stock. But only reflexes of PIE etyma can be included, and these tend to concentrate in the vocabulary of Rohan and the Shire.

All reflex pages are currently under active construction; as time goes on, corrections may be made and/or more etyma & reflexes may be added.

Note: this page is for systems/browsers lacking Unicode^® support, or having less than full Unicode 2.0 font support. Versions of this page rendered in alternate character sets are available via links (see Unicode 3 and Unicode 2) in the left margin.

Pokorny Etymon: 2. dhen- 'flat of hand, surface of land, etc.'

Semantic Field: Flat

Indo-European Reflexes:

Family/Language	Reflex(es)	PoS/Gram.	Gloss	Source(s)
English
Old English:	dene	n.masc/fem	vale, valley	ASD
	denn	n.neut	den	W7/ASD
	denu	n.fem	plain, dale, vale, valley	ASD
Middle English:	Dan	prop.n	Dane	W7
	den	n	den	W7
English:	Dane	prop.n	native of Denmark	LRC
	Danegeld	prop.n	English tax for forces opposing Danes	AHD/CDC
	Danelaw	prop.n	Danish laws once enforced in N/E England	AHD/CDC
	Danish	prop.adj/n	(re:) Denmark people/culture/language	AHD
	den	n	lair of wild (predatory) animal	AHD/W7
	Dwimordene	prop.n	a.k.a. Lorien in Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings	LRC
	thenar	n	ball of thumb	AHD/W7
W-Germanic
Dutch:	denne	n.fem	deck of ship	ASD
Old High German:	tenni	n.neut	area, threshing floor	W7/ASD
Middle High German:	tenne	n.neut	area	ASD
German:	Tenne	n.fem	area	ASD
N-Germanic
Old Norse:	Danr	prop.n	Dane, citizen of Denmark	W7
Italic
New Latin:	thenar	n.neut	ball of thumb	W7
Hellenic
Greek:	thenar	n.neut	palm of hand	W7

Key to Part-of-Speech/Grammatical feature abbreviations:

Abbrev.		Meaning
adj	=	adjective
fem	=	feminine (gender)
masc	=	masculine (gender)
n	=	noun
neut	=	neuter (gender)
prop	=	proper

Key to information Source codes (always with 'LRC' as editor):

Code		Citation
AHD	=	Calvert Watkins: The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots, 2nd ed. (2000)
ASD	=	Joseph Bosworth and T. Northcote Toller: An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (1898)
CDC	=	W.D. Whitney and B.E. Smith: The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia (1889-1911)
LRC	=	Linguistics Research Center, University of Texas, Austin
W7	=	Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (1963)

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