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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: 2. rebh- 'to roof, thatch'

Semantic Field: Roof

Indo-European Reflexes:

Family/Language	Reflex(es)	PoS/Gram.	Gloss	Source(s)
English
Old English:	rib(b)	n.neut	rib	ASD
Middle English:	rib	n	rib	W7
	riff	n	reef (of sail)	W7
English:	reef	n	chain/ridge of rocks/sand at/near water surface	AHD/W7
	reef	n	part of sail pulled in/out to regulate size	AHD/W7
	rib	n	curved bony/cartilaginous rod helping stiffen vertebrate body walls	AHD/W7
	spareribs	n.pl	pork ribs separated from bacon strip	AHD/W7
W-Germanic
Dutch:	rib	n	rib	TLL
	rif	n	reef (of rock/sand)	W7
Middle Low German:	ribbe	n	rib	W7
	ribbesper	n	spareribs: (pickled) spit-roasted pork ribs	W7
Low German:	ribbesper	n	spareribs: (pickled) spit-roasted pork ribs	W7
Old High German:	rippa	n.fem	rib	ASD
	rippi	n.str.neut	rib	ASD
German:	Riff	n.neut	reef	LRC
	Rippe	n.fem	rib	LRC
N-Germanic
Old Norse:	rif	n.neut	rib; reef	LRC
Icelandic:	rif	n.neut	rib	ASD
Danish:	ribben	n	rib	TLL
Swedish:	revben	n	rib	TLL
Hellenic
Greek:	ἐρέφω	vb	to roof over, make a roof	LRC
	ὀροφή	n.fem	roof	LRC

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

Abbrev.		Meaning
fem	=	feminine (gender)
n	=	noun
neut	=	neuter (gender)
pl	=	plural (number)
str	=	strong (inflection)
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
TLL	=	Frederick Bodmer: The Loom of Language (1944)
W7	=	Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (1963)

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