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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: ghrē- : ghrō- : ghrə- 'to grow, become green'

Semantic Fields: to Grow; Green

Indo-European Reflexes:

Family/Language	Reflex(es)	PoS/Gram.	Gloss	Source(s)
English
Old English:	grǣd	n	grass	RPN
	græs	n.neut	grass	RPN/ASD
	grasian	vb	to graze	W7
	grēne	adj	green	RPN
	grōwan	vb.str	to grow, increase, flourish	RPN/ASD
Middle English:	gras	n	grass	W7
	grasen	vb	to graze	W7
	grene	adj	green	W7
	growen	vb	to grow	W7
	herbe	n	herb	AHD
English:	grass	n	herbage suitable/used for grazing animals	AHD/W7
	graze	vb	to eat growing herbage	AHD/W7
	green	adj	re: color green	AHD/W7
	Greenfields	prop.n	Shire battle locale in Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings	LRC
	Greenway	prop.n	road through Bree in Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings	LRC
	Greenwood	prop.n	Mirkwood's former name in Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings	LRC
	grow, grew, grown	vb.str	to spring up, develop to maturity	AHD/W7
	herb	n	green leafy plant without persistent woody tissue	TLL/W7
	herbaceous	adj	re: herb(s)	W7
	herbage	n	herbaceous vegetation (used for grazing)	W7
	herbivore	n	plant-eating animal	W7
W-Germanic
Old Frisian:	grēne	adj	green	ASD
	grōia	vb	to grow	RPN
	grōwa	vb	to grow	RPN
Dutch:	gras	n	grass	TLL
	groeien	vb	to grow	RPN
Old Saxon:	grōni	adj	green	ASD
Middle Low German:	grōien	vb	to grow	RPN
Old High German:	gras	n	grass	W7
	graz	n	shoot, sprig, sprout	RPN
	grōen/grūen	vb	to grow, flourish	ASD
	gruoni	adj	green	ASD
	gruo(w)an	vb	to grow	W7
German:	Gras	n.neut	grass	LRC
	grasen	vb	to graze	LRC
	grün	adj	green	ASD
N-Germanic
Old Norse:	gras	n.neut	grass, pasture; vegetation	LRC
	gróa	vb	to grow	LRC
Old Icelandic:	gróði	n	growth, increase	RPN
	gróðr	n	growth, crop	RPN
	gróna	vb	to become green	RPN
Icelandic:	gresja	vb	to graze	ASD
	grōa	vb	to grow	ASD
	grænn	adj	green	ASD
Faeroese:	gróa	vb	to grow	RPN
Norwegian:	gro	vb	to grow	RPN
Danish:	gro	vb	to grow	RPN
	græs	n	grass	TLL
Swedish:	gro	vb	to grow	RPN
	gräs	n	grass	TLL
E-Germanic
Gothic:	gras	n	grass	RPN
Italic
Latin:	grāmen	n	grass, stalk	RPN
	herba	n.fem	herb, grass; stalk, blade	TLL
Old French:	erbe	n	herb	AHD
	erbier	n	garden	AHD
French:	herbe	n.fem	herb, grass	TLL
Hellenic
Homeric Greek:	φορβή	n	herb, fodder, forage	CLD

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

Abbrev.		Meaning
adj	=	adjective
fem	=	feminine (gender)
n	=	noun
neut	=	neuter (gender)
prop	=	proper
str	=	strong (inflection)
vb	=	verb

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)
CLD	=	Cassell's Latin Dictionary (1959, rev. 1968)
LRC	=	Linguistics Research Center, University of Texas, Austin
RPN	=	Allan R. Bomhard: Reconstructing Proto-Nostratic (2002)
TLL	=	Frederick Bodmer: The Loom of Language (1944)
W7	=	Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (1963)

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