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.

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: 4. mer-, merə- 'to die'

Semantic Field: to Die; Dead; Death

Indo-European Reflexes:

Family/Language	Reflex(es)	PoS/Gram.	Gloss	Source(s)
Celtic
Old Irish:	marb	adj	dead	LRC
	marbaid	vb	to put to death	LRC
Welsh:	marw	adj	dead	LRC
English
Old English:	morð	n.masc	death, murder, destruction	LRC
	morðor	n.masc/neut	murder, misery, wickedness	W7/ASD
Middle English:	amortisen	vb	to amortize, alienate	W7
	immortal	adj	immortal	W7
	moreyne	n	murrain	W7
	mortal	adj	mortal	W7
	morte-mayne	n	mortmain	W7
	mortuarie	n	mortuary	W7
	mot	n	horn blast, note	W7
	murther/murdre	n	murder	W7
English:	ambrosia	n	food of Greek/Roman gods	AHD/W7
	amortize	vb.trans	to kill, slay, deaden, destroy	AHD/OED
	amrita	n	ambrosia bestowing immortality (Hindu mythology)	AHD
	immortal	adj	exempt from death	AHD/W7
	Mordor	prop.n	land of Sauron in Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings	LRC
	moribund	adj	dying	AHD/W7
	mort	n	note (sounded on horn) signalling death of prey	AHD/W7
	mortal	adj	fatal, causing death	AHD/W7
	mortar	n	strong vessel where substances are ground/pounded with pestle	AHD/W7
	mortmain	n	inalienable land/building possession	AHD/W7
	mortuary	n	place where dead bodies are kept before burial	AHD/W7
	murder	n	unlawful killing of person	AHD/W7
	murrain	n	plague/pestilence affecting domestic plants/animals	AHD/W7
	postmortem	adj	occurring after death	AHD
British English:	amortise	vb.trans	to amortize	LRC
W-Germanic
Old Frisian:	morth	n	death, murder, destruction	ASD
Old Saxon:	morð	n	death, murder, destruction	ASD
Old High German:	mord	n	death, murder, destruction	W7
German:	Mord	n.masc	murder	LRC
N-Germanic
Old Norse:	morþ	n	death, murder	LRC
	myrða	vb	to kill, murder	LRC
Icelandic:	morð	n	death, murder, destruction	ASD
E-Germanic
Gothic:	maurþr	n	murder	LRC
	maurþrjan	vb	to murder	LRC
Italic
Latin:	ambrosia	n.fem	ambrosia	W7
	immortalis	adj	immortal, eternal	W7
	moribundus	adj	dying	W7
	morior, mori	vb.dep	to die, expire	W7
	mors, mortis	n.fem	death	W7
	mortalis, mortalis, mortale	adj	mortal	LRC
	mortuarius	adj	re: the dead	W7
	mortuus	vb.ptc	dead	W7
Vulgar Latin:	admortio, admortīre	vb	to amortize	W7
Portuguese:	morrer	vb	to die	TLL
Spanish:	morir	vb	to die	TLL
Old French:	amortir	vb	to amortize	AHD
	mort(e)	adj	dead	W7
	mortemain	n.fem	mortmain	W7
Middle French:	amortir	vb	to absorb, amortize	W7
	morine	n.fem	murrain	W7
	morir	vb	to die	W7
	mortel	adj	mortal	W7
	mortemain	n.fem	mortmain	W7
French:	amortir	vb	to absorb, subdue, amortize	W7
	mourir	vb	to die	TLL
Italian:	morire	vb	to die	TLL
Baltic
Lithuanian:	mir̃ti, mìršta, mìrė	vb	to die	LRC
	mirtìs	n.fem	death	LRC
Slavic
Old Church Slavonic:	mrĕti	vb	to die	LRC
	mrьtvъ	adj	dead	LRC
	sъmrьtь	n.fem	death	LRC
Hellenic
Homeric Greek:	ἀμβροσία	n.fem	ambrosia, immortality	LRC
Greek:	ʼάμβροτος	n.masc	immortal man	LRC
	βροτός	n.masc	mortal man	LRC
	*μορτός	n.masc	mortal man	LRC
Anatolian
Hittite:	martari	vb	to disappear	LRC
	merzi	vb	to go missing	LRC
Armenian
Classical Armenian:	mahaber	adj	death-bearing	LRC
	mah	n	death	LRC
	mard	n	(mortal) man	LRC
	mardik	n	mankind, people	LRC
Armenian:	meranim	vb	to die	LRC
Iranian
Old Persian:	am(a)riyatā	vb.pret	(he) died	LRC
Avestan:	miryeite	vb	to die	LRC
Indic
Sanskrit:	amṛtam	adj/adv	without death	AHD
	márate/mriyáte	vb	to die	LRC
	mṛtam	n	death	AHD

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

Abbrev.		Meaning
adj	=	adjective
adv	=	adverb(ial)
dep	=	deponent
fem	=	feminine (gender)
masc	=	masculine (gender)
n	=	noun
neut	=	neuter (gender)
pret	=	preterite (tense)
prop	=	proper
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)
ASD	=	Joseph Bosworth and T. Northcote Toller: An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (1898)
LRC	=	Linguistics Research Center, University of Texas, Austin
OED	=	James A.H. Murray et al: The Oxford English Dictionary (1933)
TLL	=	Frederick Bodmer: The Loom of Language (1944)
W7	=	Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (1963)

Nearby etyma: previous | next