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 with Unicode^® support, but fonts for only the Unicode 2.0 character set (including combining diacritics). Versions of this page rendered in alternate character sets are available via links (see Unicode 3 and ISO-8859-1) in the left margin.

Pokorny Etymon: areq- 'to lock, guard, protect'

Semantic Field: to Save, Preserve, Keep Safe

Indo-European Reflexes:

Family/Language	Reflex(es)	PoS/Gram.	Gloss	Source(s)
Celtic
Irish:	airc	n	ark	CDC
Gaelic:	airc	n	ark	CDC
Welsh:	arch	n	ark	CDC
English
Old English:	(e)arc/erc/earce	n.fem	ark	CDC/ASD
	orc	n.masc	ogre, demon, monster; infernal region(s)	ASD
	*orcen	n	demon, evil spirit; sea monster	ASD
Northumbrian:	arc/ærc	n	ark	CDC
Middle English:	ark(e)	n	ark	CDC
	exercise	n	exercise	W7
	orke	n	ogre	OED
English:	arcane	adj	esoteric	AHD/W7
	ark	n	(holy) chest, box, coffer; sacred boat	AHD/W7
	autarky	n	self-sufficiency	AHD/W7
	coerce	vb.trans	to compel by threat	AHD/W7
	exercise	n	use, bringing into play	AHD/W7
	orc	n	large goblin in Tolkien: The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings	LRC
	Orcrist	prop.n	sword (Goblin-Cleaver) in Tolkien: The Hobbit	LRC
	Orcus	prop.n	god of death (Roman mythology)	W2I
W-Germanic
Old Frisian:	erke	n	ark	CDC
Dutch:	ark	n.fem	ark	CDC/ASD
Old High German:	arahha/archa/arka	n	ark	W7/CDC
Middle High German:	arche	n.fem	ark	CDC/ASD
German:	arche	n	ark	CDC
	autarkie	n	self-sufficiency	W7
N-Germanic
Old Norse:	örk	n.fem	ark	ASD
Icelandic:	örk	n	ark	CDC
Danish:	ark	n	ark	CDC
Swedish:	ark	n	ark	CDC
E-Germanic
Gothic:	arka	n	ark	CDC
Italic
Latin:	arca	n.fem	ark	CDC
	arcanus	adj	secret	W7
	arceo, arcēre	vb	to keep, shut up, enclose, defend	W7
	arx, arcis	n.fem	citadel, fortress	LRC
	coerceo, coercēre	vb	to enclose, restrain, keep in order	W7
	exerceo, exercēre, exercitus	vb	to drive on, keep busy	W7
	exercitium	n.neut	training, exercise	W7
	Orcus	prop.n.masc	Orcus	IEW
Portuguese:	arca	n	ark	CDC
Spanish:	arca	n	ark	CDC
	huerco	n	demon, monster; shade of dying person	LRC
Old French:	arche	n	ark	CDC
Middle French:	exercice	n.masc	exercise	W7
French:	arche	n	ark	CDC
Provençal:	archa	n	ark	CDC
Italian:	arca	n	ark	CDC
	orco	n	giant, demon, monster	LRC
Slavic
Old Church Slavonic:	raka	n.fem	coffin, sepulchre	LRC
Hellenic
Greek:	ἀρκεῐν	vb	to keep/ward off, suffice	CDC
	autarkeia	n.fem	autarky	W7
	autarkēs	adj	self-sufficient	W7
Armenian
Classical Armenian:	argelum	vb	to deny, hinder, prohibit	LRC

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
trans	=	transitive
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)
CDC	=	W.D. Whitney and B.E. Smith: The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia (1889-1911)
IEW	=	Julius Pokorny: Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (1959)
LRC	=	Linguistics Research Center, University of Texas, Austin
OED	=	James A.H. Murray et al: The Oxford English Dictionary (1933)
W2I	=	Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language, 2nd ed. (1959)
W7	=	Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (1963)

Nearby etyma: previous | next