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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: dn̥g̑hū, dn̥g̑hu̯ā 'tongue'

Semantic Field: Tongue

Indo-European Reflexes:

Family/Language	Reflex(es)	PoS/Gram.	Gloss	Source(s)
Celtic
Old Irish:	tengae	n	tongue	GED
Middle Breton:	teaut	n	tongue	GED
Old Cornish:	tauot	n	tongue	GED
Middle Welsh:	tauawt	n	tongue	GED
English
Old English:	tunge	n.wk.fem	tongue	GED
	wyrm-tunge	n.wk.fem	bitter-spoken person	LRC
Middle English:	language	n	language	W7
	languet	n	languet	W7
	tunge	n	tongue	W7
English:	bilingual	adj	re: two tongues/languages	AHD/W7
	biltong	n	jerked meat	AHD/W7
	language	n	community use of vocal sounds/written symbols to communicate	AHD/W7
	languet	n	something resembling tongue in form/function	AHD/W7
	ligula	n	strap-shaped/tongue-like structure (esp. in insects)	AHD
	ligule	n	scale-like plant projection	AHD/W7
	lingo	n	strange/incomprehensible speech/language	AHD/W7
	lingua	n	tongue, tongue-like organ	AHD
	linguine/linguini	n	long, flat, thin pasta strand(s)	AHD
	linguist	n	language specialist	AHD
	linguistic	adj	re: language	LRC
	linguistics	n	study of language(s)	LRC
	tongue	n	fleshy movable sensory organ of lower jaw	AHD/W7
	Wormtongue	prop.n	epithet for Grima in Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings	LRC
W-Germanic
Old Frisian:	tunge	n.wk.fem	tongue	GED
Middle Dutch:	tonghe	n	tongue	AHD
Dutch:	tong	n	tongue	TLL
Afrikaans:	biltong	n	biltong	W7
	tong	n	tongue	W7
Old Saxon:	tunga	n.wk.fem	tongue	GED
Old Low German:	tunga	n.fem	tongue	ASD
Old High German:	zunga	n.wk.fem	tongue	GED
German:	Zunge	n.fem	tongue	LRC
N-Germanic
Old Norse:	tunga	n.wk.fem	tongue	LRC
Old Icelandic:	tunga	n.wk.fem	tongue	GED
Icelandic:	tunga	n.fem	tongue	ASD
Danish:	tunge	n	tongue	TLL
Swedish:	tunga	n	tongue	TLL
E-Germanic
Gothic:	tuggo	n.fem	tongue	GED
Italic
Old Latin:	dingua	n	tongue	GED
Latin:	bilinguis	adj	bilingual	W7
	ligula	n.fem.dim	small tongue, strap	W7
	lingua, linguae	n.fem	tongue, language	LRC
New Latin:	ligula	n.fem.dim	part of insect's labium	W7
Old French:	langua	n.fem	tongue, language	W7
	language	n.masc	language	W7
Middle French:	langue	n.fem	tongue	W7
	languete	n.fem.dim	small tongue	W7
Provençal:	lingo	n.masc	tongue	W7
Italian:	linguina	n.dim	small tongue	AHD
Baltic
Lithuanian:	liežùvis	n	tongue	GED
Slavic
Old Church Slavonic:	językъ	n.masc	tongue, language, nation	LRC
Armenian
Classical Armenian:	lezu	n	tongue, language	LRC
Tocharian
Tocharian B:	käntwā	n	tongue	GED
Tocharian A:	käntu	n.pl	tongues	GED

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

Abbrev.		Meaning
adj	=	adjective
dim	=	diminutive
fem	=	feminine (gender)
masc	=	masculine (gender)
n	=	noun
pl	=	plural (number)
prop	=	proper
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)
GED	=	Winfred P. Lehmann: A Gothic Etymological Dictionary (1986)
LRC	=	Linguistics Research Center, University of Texas, Austin
TLL	=	Frederick Bodmer: The Loom of Language (1944)
W7	=	Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (1963)

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