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: médhu 'mead, honey'

Semantic Fields: Mead; Honey

Indo-European Reflexes:

Family/Language	Reflex(es)	PoS/Gram.	Gloss	Source(s)
Celtic
Old Irish:	mid	n	mead	LRC
Welsh:	meddyglyn	n	drink of mead	W7/WE
English
Old English:	medo/medu/meodn	n.masc	mead	W7/ASD
Middle English:	amatiste	n	amethyst	W7
	mede	n	mead	W7
English:	amethyst	n	crystallized quartz in clear blue/violet/purple color	AHD/W7
	mead	n	drink made from fermented honey	AHD/W7
	Meduseld	prop.n	Mark palace in Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings	LRC
	methylene	n	bivalent hydrocarbon radical	AHD
W-Germanic
Old High German:	metu/meto/mito	n.masc	mead	W7/ASD
German:	Meth	n	mead	ASD
N-Germanic
Old Norse:	mjoðr	n.masc	mead	LRC
Icelandic:	mjödr	n.masc	mead	ASD
Italic
Latin:	amethystus	n.fem	amethyst	W7
Old French:	amatiste	n.fem	amethyst	W7
Baltic
Lithuanian:	medùs	n	honey	LRC
Slavic
Russian:	med	n	honey	LRC
	medved	n	bear, lit. honey-eater	LRC
Hellenic
Homeric Greek:	méthu	n.neut	mead, wine	LRC
Greek:	amethystos	n.fem	remedy for drunkenness	W7
	methuskein	vb	to intoxicate	AHD
	methyw	vb	to be drunk	W7
Anatolian
Luwian:	maddu-	n	mead	LRC
Iranian
Avestan:	madu-	n	mead, wine	LRC
Indic
Sanskrit:	mádhu	n	honey	LRC
Tocharian
Tocharian B:	mit	n	honey	LRC

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

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

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
W7	=	Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (1963)
WE	=	H. Meurig Evans and W.O. Thomas: Welsh-English, English-Welsh Dictionary (1969)

Nearby etyma: previous | next