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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: i̯em- 'to hold, match, defeat, geminate; twin'

Semantic Field: to Hold

Indo-European Reflexes:

Family/Language	Reflex(es)	PoS/Gram.	Gloss	Source(s)
English
Old English:	ef(e)n/æfen	adj	even, equal	IEW/ASD
	efn(e)/efen	adv	just, even	IEW/ASD
Middle English:	even	adj/adv	even	W7
	gemel	n	twin	AHD
English:	bigeminal	adj	paired, double	AHD/W7
	even	adj	flat, smooth, level, uniform	IEW/W7
	even	adv	quite, fully, exactly, precisely	IEW/W7
	geminate	adj	duplicate, arranged in pairs	AHD/W7
	geminate	vb	to pair, double, become paired	W7
	Gemini	prop.n	Twins (zodiacal constellation)	LRC
	gimmal	n	two/more interlocked rings	AHD
	trigeminus	n	main facial sensory nerve	AHD
W-Germanic
German:	eben	adj	even	LRC
	Ebene	n.fem	plain	TLL
	neben	prep	beside, next to	TLL
N-Germanic
Old Norse:	Ymir	prop.n.masc	Ymir (a giant)	LRC
Italic
Latin:	Gemini, Geminorum	prop.n.masc.pl	Gemini, the Twins (Castor and Pollux)	W7
	gemino, gemināre, gemināvī, geminātus	vb	to double	W7
	geminus	n.masc	twin	W7
Late Latin:	bigeminus	adj	doubled	W7

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

Abbrev.		Meaning
adj	=	adjective
adv	=	adverb(ial)
fem	=	feminine (gender)
masc	=	masculine (gender)
n	=	noun
pl	=	plural (number)
prep	=	preposition
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)
IEW	=	Julius Pokorny: Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (1959)
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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