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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.

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: (s)leu- 'slack, feeble, loosely hanging'

Semantic Fields: Weak, Infirm; to Drop

Indo-European Reflexes:

Family/Language	Reflex(es)	PoS/Gram.	Gloss	Source(s)
Celtic
Middle Irish:	lott	n	whore	GED
English
Old English:	lieþre	adj	useless	GED
	*sliete	n	sleet, hail	IEW
Middle English:	slugge	n	slug	W7
English:	slear/sleer	vb	to smear, spread	IEW
	sleet	n	(partly) frozen rain	IEW/W7
	slete	n	sleet	W7
	slouch	n	lout, lazy/awkward/ungainly person	W7
	slouch	vb	to walk/act like slouch	IEW/W7
	slud	n.dial	sludge	IEW
	sludge	n	mud, mire, ooze	W7
	slug	n	sluggard	IEW/W7
	sluggard	n	habitually lazy/sluggish person	W7
	sluggish	adj	slow, torpid, indolent	IEW/W7
	slur	n.obs	silt, ooze, slime, thin mud	IEW/W7
	slur	vb	to slip, slide, smear	IEW/W7
W-Germanic
Dutch:	sloddern	vb	to flap, shake	GED
Middle High German:	liederlich	adj	slight, scanty	GED
	slote(r)n	vb	to flap, shake	GED
	sluder	n.fem	sling, catapult	GED
	sluder-affe	n.masc	idler	GED
	sludern	vb.wk	to throw, sling	GED
German:	liederlich	adj	lewd, immoral, slovenly	LRC
	Schleuder	n.fem	sling, catapult	LRC
	schleudern	vb	to fling, catapult; skid, slide	LRC
N-Germanic
Old Icelandic:	sloðra	vb.wk	to drag oneself ahead	GED
Norwegian:	slugga	vb	to move slowly/sluggishly	IEW
Danish:	sludre	vb	to chatter	GED
Swedish:	slugga	vb	to move slowly/sluggishly	IEW
E-Germanic
Gothic:	*af-slauþjan	vb.wk.I	to be perplexed	GED
	*af-slauþnan	vb.wk.IV	to be amazed	GED
Slavic
Serbo-Croatian:	lutati	vb	to saunter	GED

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

Abbrev.		Meaning
I	=	class 1
IV	=	class 4
adj	=	adjective
dial	=	dialectal
fem	=	feminine (gender)
masc	=	masculine (gender)
n	=	noun
obs	=	obsolete
vb	=	verb
wk	=	weak (inflection)

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

Code		Citation
GED	=	Winfred P. Lehmann: A Gothic Etymological Dictionary (1986)
IEW	=	Julius Pokorny: Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (1959)
LRC	=	Linguistics Research Center, University of Texas, Austin
W7	=	Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (1963)

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