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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: ku̯erp-, also ku̯erb- 'to turn, wind'

Semantic Fields: to Turn; to Wind, Wrap

Indo-European Reflexes:

Family/Language	Reflex(es)	PoS/Gram.	Gloss	Source(s)
English
Old English:	hwe(a)rf	n.masc	turn, change, exchange	ASD
	hwearf	adj	turning, veering, shifting	ASD
	hwearft	n.masc	circle, circuit, revolution	ASD
	hw(i)erfan/hwearfian	vb.wk	to turn, change, revolve, move about	ASD
	hwirfan/hwyrfan	vb.wk	to turn, change, revolve, move about	ASD
Middle English:	whirlegigg	n	whirligig	W7
	whirlen	vb	to whirl	W7
English:	whirl	vb	to turn/curve with force/speed	W7
	whirligig	n	child's whirling toy	IEW/W7
W-Germanic
Old Frisian:	hwarf/werf	n	turn, change, exchange	ASD
	hwerva	vb	to walk, change, return	ASD
Old Saxon:	gi-hwerƀian	vb	to turn, change	ASD
	hwerƀan	vb	to go, wander	ASD
Old High German:	hwarba	n	turn, change, exchange	ASD
	hwarbian	vb	to change, rotate, return	ASD
	hwerban	vb	to walk, change, return	ASD
	wirbil	n	whirlwind	W7
N-Germanic
Old Norse:	hverfa	vb	to turn	LRC
	hvirfla	vb	to whirl	W7
Icelandic:	hverfa	vb	to turn	ASD
E-Germanic
Gothic:	hwairban	vb	to walk	ASD

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

Abbrev.		Meaning
adj	=	adjective
masc	=	masculine (gender)
n	=	noun
vb	=	verb
wk	=	weak (inflection)

Key to information Source codes (always with 'LRC' as editor):

Code		Citation
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
W7	=	Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (1963)

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