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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: dhuergh- : drugh- 'crippled, dwarf-like, low in stature'

Semantic Fields: Weak, Infirm; Crooked; Short

Indo-European Reflexes:

Family/Language	Reflex(es)	PoS/Gram.	Gloss	Source(s)
English
Old English:	dweorg/dweorh	n.masc	dwarf	CDC
Middle English:	dwarf/dwerf	n	dwarf	CDC
English:	dwarf, dwarves	n	abnormally/atypically small individual(s)	CDC
	Dwarrowdelf	prop.n	a.k.a. Khazad-dum in Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings	LRC
W-Germanic
Old Frisian:	dwirg	n	dwarf	ASD
Frisian:	dwirg	n	dwarf	ASD
Dutch:	dwerg	n.masc/fem	dwarf	CDC/ASD
Middle Low German:	dwarch/dwark/dwerch	n	dwarf	CDC
Old High German:	twerg	n.masc	dwarf	CDC/ASD
Middle High German:	twerc/querch/zwerch	n.neut	dwarf	CDC/ASD
German:	Zwerg	n.masc	dwarf, pygmy	CDC
N-Germanic
Old Norse:	dvergr, dvergar	n.masc	dwarf, dwarves	LRC
Icelandic:	dvergr	n.masc	dwarf	ASD
Danish:	dverg/dværg	n.masc/fem	dwarf	CDC/ASD
Swedish:	dverg	n.masc	dwarf	CDC/ASD

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

Abbrev.		Meaning
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
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

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