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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.

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: 2. mū-, mus- 'fly, gnat, midge, muscid, mosquito'

Semantic Field: Fly (n)

Indo-European Reflexes:

Family/Language	Reflex(es)	PoS/Gram.	Gloss	Source(s)
English
Old English:	mycg(e)/mygg	n.fem/masc	midge, mosquito	W7/ASD
Middle English:	migge	n	midge	W7
English:	midge	n	tiny 2-winged fly	AHD/W7
	Midgewater	prop.n	marshes in Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings	LRC
	mosquito	n	2-winged fly with female adapted to puncture skin/suck blood	AHD/W7
	Mugwort	prop.n	hobbit surname in Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings	LRC
	muscarine	n	quaternary ammonium base chemically related to choline	AHD/W7
	muscid	adj/n	(re:) housefly	AHD
	mush	vb.intrans	to hike/travel over snow with dog sled	AHD/W7
	musket	n	large heavy shoulder firearm	AHD/W7
	myiasis	n	fly maggot infestation	AHD/W7
W-Germanic
Dutch:	mug	n	gnat, midge	TLL
Old Low German:	muggia	n.fem	midge	ASD
Old High German:	mucka/mucca/mugga	n.fem	midge	W7/ASD
German:	Mücke	n.fem	midge	ASD
	Muskarin	n	muscarine	W7
N-Germanic
Old Norse:	mý	n	gnat, midge	KNW
Icelandic:	myg	n.neut	midge	ASD
Danish:	myg	n	midge	ASD
Swedish:	mygg(a)	n	gnat, midge	ASD/TLL
Italic
Latin:	musca	n.fem	fly	W7
New Latin:	muscaria	n.fem	specific epithet of fly agaric	W7
	myiasis	n.fem	fly maggot infestation	W7
Spanish:	mosca	n.fem	fly	W7
	mosquito	n.masc	mosquito	W7
Middle French:	mousquet	n.masc	musket	W7
French:	mouche	n.fem	fly	W7
American French:	moucher	vb	to blow one's nose	W7
Old Italian:	mosca	n.fem	fly	W7
	moschetto	n.masc	arrow for crossbow; musket	W7
Hellenic
Greek:	myia	n.fem	fly	W7

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

Abbrev.		Meaning
adj	=	adjective
fem	=	feminine (gender)
intrans	=	intransitive
masc	=	masculine (gender)
n	=	noun
neut	=	neuter (gender)
prop	=	proper
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)
KNW	=	Gerhard Köbler: Altnordisches Wörterbuch, 2nd ed. (2003)
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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