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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: merk̑- 'to grab, seize'

Semantic Field: to Grasp, Seize, Take Hold of

Indo-European Reflexes:

Family/Language	Reflex(es)	PoS/Gram.	Gloss	Source(s)
English
Middle English:	marchant	n	merchant	W7
	market	n	market	W7
	mart	n	mart	W7
	mercenary	n	mercenary	W7
	mercer	n	mercer	W7
	mercurie	n	mercury	W7
	mercy	n	mercy	W7
English:	commerce	n	social intercourse: exchange of ideas/opinions/sentiments	AHD/W7
	market	n	meeting of people for trade purposes via private sale/purchase	AHD/W7
	mart	n	fair, gathering of people to buy/sell	AHD/W7
	mercenary	n	one who serves merely for wages	AHD/W7
	mercer	n	dealer in textile fabrics	AHD/W7
	merchant	n	trader, buyer/seller of commodities	AHD/W7
	Mercury	prop.n	[planet named for] herald/messenger of gods (Roman mythology)	AHD/W7
	mercury	n	heavy poisonous silver-white metal	W7
	mercy	n	clemency, compassion/forbearance shown to subject/offender	AHD/W7
W-Germanic
Middle Dutch:	mar(c)t	n	mart, market	W7
Dutch:	markt	n	mart, market	TLL
German:	Markt	n.masc	mart	LRC
N-Germanic
Swedish:	marknad	n	market	TLL
Italic
Oscan:	amiricadut	adj	without remuneration	W7
Latin:	commercium	n.neut	dealing, selling	W7
	mercenarius	adj	who has wages	W7
	merces, mercedes	n.pl	wages	W7
	mercor, mercāri, mercātus	vb	to buy, trade	W7
	Mercurius	prop.n.masc	Mercury	ELD
	merx, mercis	n.fem	merchandise	W7
Vulgar Latin:	mercatans, mercatantis	vb.pres.ptc/n	trading; merchant	W7
	mercato, mercatāre	vb	to trade	W7
Medieval Latin:	merces, mercedes	n.fem	price in exchange, ranson, mercy	W7
Old French:	marcheant	n.masc	merchant	W7
	merci	n.fem	mercy	W7
	mercier	n.masc	mercer	W7
	mers	n.fem	merchandise	W7
Old North French:	market	n.masc	market	W7
Middle French:	commerce	n.masc	commerce, dealing, selling	W7

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

Abbrev.		Meaning
adj	=	adjective
fem	=	feminine (gender)
masc	=	masculine (gender)
n	=	noun
neut	=	neuter (gender)
pl	=	plural (number)
pres	=	present (tense)
prop	=	proper
ptc	=	participle
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)
ELD	=	Charlton T. Lewis: An Elementary Latin Dictionary (1999)
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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