The University of Texas at Austin; College of Liberal Arts

Hans C. Boas, Director :: PCL 5.556, 1 University Station S5490 :: Austin, TX 78712 :: 512-471-4566

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: 2. mel- 'to deceive'

Semantic Fields: Lie, Falsehood; Deceit

Indo-European Reflexes:

Family/Language	Reflex(es)	PoS/Gram.	Gloss	Source(s)
English
Middle English:	blamen	vb	to blame	W7
	blasfemen	vb	to blaspheme	W7
	dismal	adj	dismal	W7
	dismal	n	lit. evil days (marked unlucky on medieval calendars)	W7
	mal-	pfx	mal-	W7
	maladicte	adj	maledict	AHD
	malice	n	malice	W7
English:	blame	vb.trans	to censure, find fault with	AHD/W7
	blaspheme	vb	to speak of/address with irreverence	AHD/W7
	dismal	adj	dreadful, disastrous	AHD/W7
	mal-	pfx	bad; badly	AHD
	maledict	adj.arch	accursed	AHD/W7
	malefactor	n	one who commits legal offense	AHD/W7
	malefic	adj	baleful, having malignant influence	AHD/W7
	malentendu	n	misunderstanding	AHD/W7
	malevolence	n	spite, hatred, vicious malice	AHD/W7
	malevolent	adj	re: malevolence	W7
	malfeasance	n	wrongful conduct	AHD
	malice	n	ill will	AHD/W7
	markhor	n	large wild Himalayan goat	AHD
Italic
Latin:	male	adv	badly	W7
	maledictus	adj/vb.ptc	maledict	AHD
	maleficus	adj	wicked, mischievous, malefic	W7
	malitia	n.fem	malice, wickedness	W7
	malus	adj	bad, mean	W7
Late Latin:	blasphemo, blasphemāre	vb	to blaspheme	W7
Old French:	blamer	vb	to blame	W7
	mal-	pfx	mal-	W7
	mal	adj/adv	bad; badly	W7
	malice	n.fem	malice, evil	W7
Anglo-French:	dismal	n.masc	evil/unlucky day (on medieval calendar)	W7
Middle French:	mal-	pfx	mal-	W7
French:	malentendu	n.masc	malentendu	W7
Baltic
Lithuanian:	mẽlas	n.masc	falsehood	LRC
Latvian:	muldēt, muldu, muldēju	vb	to babble, rave	LRC
Hellenic
Greek:	blasphēmein	vb	to blame	W7
Iranian
Persian:	mār	n	snake	AHD
	mārkhōr	n	markhor, lit. snake-eater	AHD
Avestan:	mairya-	adj	treacherous	AHD

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

Abbrev.		Meaning
adj	=	adjective
adv	=	adverb(ial)
arch	=	archaic
fem	=	feminine (gender)
masc	=	masculine (gender)
n	=	noun
pfx	=	prefix
ptc	=	participle
trans	=	transitive
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)
LRC	=	Linguistics Research Center, University of Texas, Austin
W7	=	Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (1963)

Nearby etyma: previous | next