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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 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: au̯o-s 'maternal grandfather'

Semantic Field: Grandfather

Indo-European Reflexes:

Family/Language	Reflex(es)	PoS/Gram.	Gloss	Source(s)
Celtic
Old Irish:	aue	n.masc	grandson	W7
English
Old English:	ēam	n.masc	uncle	W7/ASD
Middle English:	uncle	n	uncle	W7
English:	atavism	n	recurrence of ancestral form in organism	AHD/W7
	avuncular	adj	re: uncle	AHD/W7
	ayah	n	native nurse/maid in India	AHD/W7
	uncle	n	parent's brother, aunt's husband	AHD/W7
W-Germanic
Old Frisian:	em	n.masc	uncle	ASD
Frisian:	yem(e)	n	uncle	ASD
Dutch:	oom	n.masc	uncle	ASD
Old High German:	ōheim	n.masc	uncle	ASD
Middle High German:	ōheim/oeheim	n.masc	uncle	ASD
German:	Oh(ei)m	n.masc	uncle	ASD
	Onkel	n.masc	uncle	CDC
N-Germanic
Old Norse:	Ái	prop.n.masc	Ai, Great-grandfather	LRC
Danish:	onkel	n	uncle	CDC
Swedish:	onkel	n	uncle	CDC
Italic
Latin:	atavus	n.masc	ancestor	W7
	avia	n.fem	grandmother	W7
	avunculus/avonculus	n.masc.dim	maternal uncle, lit. little grandfather	W7/CDC
	avus	n.masc	grandfather	W7
Portuguese:	aia	n.fem	native nurse/maid in India	W7
Spanish:	aya	n	tutor	CDC
Old French:	uncle/oncle	n.masc	uncle	CDC
French:	atavisme	n.masc	atavism, archaic inheritance	W7
	oncle	n	uncle	CDC
Provençal:	oncle/avoncle	n	uncle	CDC
Italian:	aja	n	tutor	CDC
	avunculo	n	uncle	CDC
Rumanian:	unchiu	n	maternal uncle	CDC
Indic
Hindi:	āyā	n	ayah, grandmother	W7

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

Abbrev.		Meaning
adj	=	adjective
dim	=	diminutive
fem	=	feminine (gender)
masc	=	masculine (gender)
n	=	noun
prop	=	proper

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)
LRC	=	Linguistics Research Center, University of Texas, Austin
W7	=	Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (1963)

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