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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: bhlē-u̯o-s 'a light color (blue, yellow)'

Semantic Fields: Light in Color; Blue; Yellow

Indo-European Reflexes:

Family/Language	Reflex(es)	PoS/Gram.	Gloss	Source(s)
English
Old English:	*blāw	adj	blue	IEW
Middle English:	blo	adj	black and blue	MEV
	bl(u)we/blue/blew(e)/bl(e)u	adj/n	blue	MEV/W7/CDC
English:	blue	adj	re: color blue (short-wavelength visible light)	AHD/W7
	flavin	n	yellow nitrogenous water-soluble pigment	AHD/W7
	flavone	n	colorless crystalline ketone found in primroses	AHD/W7
W-Germanic
Old Frisian:	blaw	adj	blue	CDC
Middle Dutch:	blaeuw	adj	blue	CDC
Dutch:	blaauw	adj	blue	CDC
Middle Low German:	blā(w)/blauwe	adj	blue	CDC
Low German:	blau/blaag	adj	blue	CDC
Old High German:	blāo	adj	blue	W7/IEW
Middle High German:	blā	adj	blue; yellow	IEW
German:	blau	adj	blue	IEW
N-Germanic
Old Norse:	blár	adj	black and blue	MEV
Icelandic:	blār	adj	blue	CDC
Danish:	blaa	adj	blue	CDC
Swedish:	blå	adj	blue	CDC
Italic
Latin:	flāvus	adj	yellow, golden	IEW
Middle Latin:	blāv(i)us	adj	blue	CDC
Portuguese:	blao	adj	blue	CDC
Old Spanish:	blavo	adj	blue	CDC
Spanish:	blao	adj	blue	CDC
Old French:	blue/blef	adj	blue	CDC
French:	blue	adj	blue	CDC
Provençal:	blau	adj	blue	CDC
	blava	n.fem	blue	CDC
Italian:	biaro/blù	adj	blue	CDC

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

Abbrev.		Meaning
adj	=	adjective
fem	=	feminine (gender)
n	=	noun

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)
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
MEV	=	J.R.R. Tolkien: A Middle English Vocabulary (1922)
W7	=	Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (1963)

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