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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: kes- 'to comb, itch, scratch'

Semantic Fields: Comb; to Rub

Indo-European Reflexes:

Family/Language	Reflex(es)	PoS/Gram.	Gloss	Source(s)
English
Old English:	be-snyðð(i)an	vb	to rob, divest, deprive	IEW/ASD
Middle English:	hardes/herdes/hyrdes	n.pl	hards	CDC
English:	hards/hurds	n.pl	refuse/coarse part of flax/hemp/wool	IEW/CDC
	novaculite	n	fine-grained siliceous rock	AHD/W7
	snug	adj	taut, trim, compact, seaworthy	AHD/W7
	xyster	n	surgeon's instrument for scraping bones	AHD/CDC
W-Germanic
Old High German:	snabul	n	beak	KDW
German:	Schnabel	n	beak	TLL
N-Germanic
Old Norse:	snöggr	adj	shorn, bald	W7
Swedish:	snygg	adj	snug, tidy	W7
Italic
Latin:	novā-cula	n.fem	knife, razor	W7
Hellenic
Greek:	xūein	vb	to scrape	AHD
	xūstēr	n	xyster, scraper	AHD

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

Abbrev.		Meaning
adj	=	adjective
fem	=	feminine (gender)
n	=	noun
pl	=	plural (number)
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)
CDC	=	W.D. Whitney and B.E. Smith: The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia (1889-1911)
IEW	=	Julius Pokorny: Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (1959)
KDW	=	Gerhard Köbler: Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 4th ed. (1993)
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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