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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: g^u̯ou- 'cow, ox, gaur'

Semantic Fields: Cow; Ox, Steer

Indo-European Reflexes:

Family/Language	Reflex(es)	PoS/Gram.	Gloss	Source(s)
Celtic
Old Irish:	bó	n	cow	RPN
English
Old English:	butere	n.fem	butter, cheese	ASD
	cū/cȳ(e)	n.fem	cow	RPN/AHD/ASD
Middle English:	beef	n	beef	W7
	bugle	n	bugle	W7
	butter	n	butter	W7
	cou, kyn	n	cow(s)	W7/AHD
English:	beef	n	flesh of adult domestic bovine	AHD/W7
	Bootes	prop.n	northern circumpolar constellation	LRC
	bovine	adj/n	(re:) ox/cow	AHD/W7
	buccinator	n	muscle forming cheek wall	AHD
	buffalo	n	oxlike Old World mammal	AHD
	bugle	n	brass instrument with cupped mouthpiece (like trumpet)	AHD/W7
	bulimia	n	insatiable appetite	AHD
	bumelia	n	tree/shrub with very hard wood	AHD
	buprestid	n	destructive wood-boring beetle	AHD
	butter	n	solid food emulsion made by churning milk/cream	AHD/W7
	Butterbur(r)	prop.n	Bree surname in Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings	LRC
	butyric	adj	re: a certain isomeric fatty acid	AHD/W7
	cow	n	mature female of cattle	AHD/W7
	gaur	n	(East Indian) wild ox	AHD/W7
	gayal	n	domesticated bovine mammal	AHD
	gunny	n	coarse jute sacking	AHD/W7
	kine	n.pl	cows, cattle	AHD
	nilgai	n	large long-legged Indian antelope	AHD
	proboscis	n	trunk (e.g. of elephant)	AHD/W7
W-Germanic
Old Frisian:	botera/butera	n	butter	ASD
	kū	n.fem	cow	RPN/ASD
Frisian:	buter	n	butter	ASD
	kw, ky	n.fem	cow(s)	ASD
Dutch:	bōter	n.fem	butter	ASD
	koe	n.fem	cow	ASD
Old Saxon:	kō	n.fem	cow	RPN/ASD
Old High German:	butera/butere	n.fem	butter	W7/ASD
	kuo/chuo/kua/kō	n.fem	cow	W7/ASD
Middle High German:	buter	n	butter	ASD
	kuo	n.fem	cow	ASD
German:	Butter	n.fem	butter	ASD
	Kuh	n.fem	cow	ASD
N-Germanic
Old Norse:	kýr	n.fem	cow	LRC
Icelandic:	kȳr	n.fem	cow	ASD
Danish:	ko(e)	n	cow	ASD
Swedish:	ko	n.fem	cow	ASD
Italic
Latin:	bōs, bovis	n.masc/fem	bull, bovine	RPN
	bucca	n.fem	cheek	ELD
	būcina	n.fem	horn, trumpet	AHD
	būcinātor	n.masc	trumpeter	ELD
	būcula	n.fem.dim	heifer, young cow	ELD
	buculus	n.masc	little ox	W7
	butyrum	n.neut	butter	W7
	proboscis	n.fem	a growth	W7
Late Latin:	bōs, bovis	n.masc/fem	bull, bovine	W7
	bovinus	adj	bovine	W7
Portuguese:	boi	n	bovine: ox	TLL
Spanish:	buey	n.masc	bovine: ox	TLL
Old French:	buef	n.masc	beef; bovine: ox	W7
	bugle	n.masc	ox, bugle	W7
French:	beurre	n.masc	butter	ASD
	bœuf	n.masc	beef; bovine: ox	TLL
	butyrique	adj	re: butter	W7
Italian:	bove	n	bovine: ox	TLL
	bue	n.masc	bovine: ox	LRC
	bu(ti)rro	n.masc	butter	ASD
Baltic
Lithuanian:	gauja	n.fem	herd, band	W7
Latvian:	gotiņa	n.fem	little cow	LRC
	gùovs	n	cow	RPN
Hellenic
Greek:	βόσκω	vb	to feed, tend (cattle)	LS
	βου̃ς	n.masc/fem	ox, bull, cow	LRC
	βούτης	n.masc	herdsman, plowman	LS
	βού-τῡρον	n.neut	butter	LS
	πουλυβότειρα	adj	fruitful, all-nourishing	LRC
	προβοσκίς	n.fem	means of providing food	LS
Armenian
Armenian:	kov	n	cow	RPN
Iranian
Avestan:	gāuš	n	ox, bull, cow	RPN
Indic
Sanskrit:	gáuḥ/gouḥ	n	ox, bull, cow	RPN
	gaura	n	gaur, bull	W7
Bengali:	gayāl	n	gayal	AHD
Hindi:	ganī	n	coarse jute sacking	W7
	gaur	n	gaur	W7
Tocharian
Tocharian B:	ke_u	n	cow	RPN
Tocharian A:	ko	n	cow	RPN

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

Abbrev.		Meaning
adj	=	adjective
dim	=	diminutive
fem	=	feminine (gender)
masc	=	masculine (gender)
n	=	noun
neut	=	neuter (gender)
pl	=	plural (number)
prop	=	proper
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)
ELD	=	Charlton T. Lewis: An Elementary Latin Dictionary (1999)
LRC	=	Linguistics Research Center, University of Texas, Austin
LS	=	Liddell and Scott: Greek-English Lexicon, 7th-9th ed's (1882-1940), rev.
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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