The University of Texas at Austin; College of Liberal Arts

Hans C. Boas, Director :: PCL 5.556, 1 University Station S5490 :: Austin, TX 78712 :: 512-471-4566

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: 4. er-, er-t-, er-u- 'earth'

Semantic Field: Earth, Land

Indo-European Reflexes:

Family/Language	Reflex(es)	PoS/Gram.	Gloss	Source(s)
English
Old English:	eard	n.masc	earth; home, native country	ASD
	eorþ(e)	n.fem	earth	ASD
	middan-eard	n.masc	middle dwelling, lit. middle-earth	ASD
Middle English:	erthe	n	earth	W7
English:	aardvark	n	nocturnal ant-eating African mammal	AHD/W7
	aardwolf	n	carrion-eating SE African mammal	AHD/W7
	earth	n	our world; soil, land, ground	AHD/W7
	earthen	adj	made of earth-soil	W7
	Middle-earth	prop.n	world setting in Tolkien: The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings	LRC
W-Germanic
Middle Dutch:	aerde	n	earth	AHD
Dutch:	aard	n.masc	nature, temper	ASD
	aarde	n	earth	TLL
Afrikaans:	aard	n	earth	W7
	aardvark	n	aardvark	W7
	aardwolf	n	aardwolf	W7
Old Saxon:	ard	n.masc	home, dwelling	ASD
Old High German:	art	n.fem	plow	ASD
	erda	n.fem	earth	W7
Middle High German:	art	n	nature	ASD
German:	Art	n.fem	kind, nature	ASD
	Erde	n.fem	earth	LRC
	irden	adj	earthen	TLL
N-Germanic
Old Norse:	jorð	n.fem	earth	LRC
Danish:	jord	n	earth	TLL
Swedish:	jord	n	earth	TLL
E-Germanic
Gothic:	aírþa	n.str.fem	earth	LRC
Hellenic
Greek:	eraze	adv	to the ground	W7

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

Abbrev.		Meaning
adj	=	adjective
adv	=	adverb(ial)
fem	=	feminine (gender)
masc	=	masculine (gender)
n	=	noun
prop	=	proper
str	=	strong (inflection)

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)
LRC	=	Linguistics Research Center, University of Texas, Austin
TLL	=	Frederick Bodmer: The Loom of Language (1944)
W7	=	Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (1963)

Nearby etyma: previous | next