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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: 1. bherem- 'to stand out; brim, edge, hem'

Semantic Field: Edge

Indo-European Reflexes:

Family/Language	Reflex(es)	PoS/Gram.	Gloss	Source(s)
English
Old English:	brēm(b)el/brǣmbel/brēmber	n.masc	bramble	W7/ASD
	brōm	n	broom	W7
	brȳmme	n.masc	brim, brink, border	ASD
Middle English:	brembel/brem(m)bil	n	bramble	W7/CDC
	brimme/brymme	n	brim, brink, water's edge	W7/MEV
	broom	n	broom	W7
English:	berm	n	narrow shelf/ledge/path	AHD/W7
	bramble	n	prickly shrubs	AHD/W7
	brim	n	rim/edge of cup/bowl/depression	AHD/W7
	broom	n	leguminous shrub	AHD/W7
W-Germanic
Middle Dutch:	berme	n	berm	CDC
	br(a)eme	n	bramble	CDC
Dutch:	berm	n	berm, ground alongside dike	W7
	braam	n.masc	bramble	ASD
	braam-bēzie	n.fem	blackberry	ASD
	brem	n.fem	broom	ASD
Middle Low German:	berme	n	berm	CDC
Low German:	braam	n	broom, bramble	CDC
	brummel	n	bramble	CDC
Old High German:	brāmo/brāma	n.masc	bramble	W7/ASD/CDC
Middle High German:	brāme	n	bramble	CDC
	brem	n	brim	W7
German:	Berme	n	berm	CDC
	Bram	n.masc	broom	CDC
	Bräme	n.fem	edge, border; hedge, bramble	LRC
	Brombeere	n.fem	blackberry	ASD
Swiss German:	Bramen	n	bramble	CDC
N-Germanic
Icelandic:	barmr	n	brim, edge, border of sea/river	CDC
Old Danish:	bremble/brymle	n	bramble	CDC
Danish:	brambær	n.neut	blackberry	ASD
Swedish:	brombär	n.masc	blackberry	ASD
Italic
Middle French:	brimme	n.fem	brim	W7
French:	berme	n.fem	berm	W7/R1
Slavic
Russian:	berma	n	berm	CDC

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

Abbrev.		Meaning
fem	=	feminine (gender)
masc	=	masculine (gender)
n	=	noun
neut	=	neuter (gender)

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
MEV	=	J.R.R. Tolkien: A Middle English Vocabulary (1922)
R1	=	Josette Rey-Debove and Alain Rey, eds. Le Nouveau Petit Robert (1993)
W7	=	Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (1963)

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