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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 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: ā̆tos, atta 'daddy, mommy (nursery word)'

Semantic Field: Parent(s)

Indo-European Reflexes:

Family/Language	Reflex(es)	PoS/Gram.	Gloss	Source(s)
English
Old English:	æðel/ǣðel/ēðel	n.masc/neut	homeland, property, inheritance; (name for) OE-rune	ASD
	æðele/eðele	adj	noble	ASD
	æþeling	n	atheling	W7
	æþelu	n	nobility	W7
	ēðel-land/ēðel-lond	n.neut	native land	ASD
Middle English:	atheling	n	atheling	W7
English:	atavism	n	throwback, recurrence of ancestral form	AHD/W7
	athelas	n	healing herb in Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings	LRC
	atheling	n	prince, nobleman	AHD/W7
	Athelney	prop.n	lit. princes' island	CDC
	tawdry	adj/n	cheap and gaudy (finery)	AHD/W7
W-Germanic
Old Frisian:	ethel/edel	adj	noble	ASD
	ēthel	n.masc	home, native land	ASD
	eþeling/edling	n	atheling	CDC
Old Saxon:	eðili	adj	noble	ASD
	eðiling	n	atheling	CDC
	ōðil	n.masc	home, native land	ASD
Old High German:	adal	n	nobility	W7
	adaling	n	atheling	CDC
	edili	adj	noble	ASD
	uodal	n.neut	home, native land	ASD
Middle High German:	edele	adj	noble	ASD
German:	Adel	n.masc	peerage, nobility, aristocracy	LRC
	adeln	vb	to ennoble, bestow peerage	LRC
	adlig	adj	noble	LRC
N-Germanic
Runic:	oþila	n	homeland, inheritance; (name for) O-rune	LRC
Icelandic:	ōðal	n.neut	home, native land	ASD
Swedish:	ädel	adj	noble	ASD
E-Germanic
Gothic:	atta	n.wk.masc	father	LRC
Italic
Latin:	atavus	n.masc	ancestor, forefather, grandfather's grandfather	AHD/ELD
	atta	n	father	AHD
Middle Latin:	adalingus/adelingus	n	atheling	CDC
French:	atavisme	n	atavism	AHD
Albanian
Albanian:	atdhe	n.masc	fatherland	LRC

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

Abbrev.		Meaning
adj	=	adjective
masc	=	masculine (gender)
n	=	noun
neut	=	neuter (gender)
prop	=	proper
vb	=	verb
wk	=	weak (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)
CDC	=	W.D. Whitney and B.E. Smith: The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia (1889-1911)
ELD	=	Charlton T. Lewis: An Elementary Latin Dictionary (1999)
LRC	=	Linguistics Research Center, University of Texas, Austin
W7	=	Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (1963)

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