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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: 3. sē(i)-, səi- : sī-, and sei- : si- 'to bind, strap, tie'

Semantic Field: to Bind

Indo-European Reflexes:

Family/Language	Reflex(es)	PoS/Gram.	Gloss	Source(s)
English
Old English:	seono/se(o)nu/si(o)nu/synu	n.fem	nerve, sinew	W7/ASD
Middle English:	secular	adj	secular	W7
	sinewe	n	sinew	W7
English:	equisetum	n	lower tracheophyte (perennial plant)	AHD/W7
	poudesoy/paduasoy	n	rich corded silk fabric	AHD/W7
	secular	adj	worldly, temporal	AHD/W7
	seta	n	slender rigid/springy/bristly part of plant/animal	AHD/W7
	setiferous	adj	bristly, having bristles/setae	AHD
	setigerous	adj	setiferous	AHD
	sinew	n	tendon	AHD/W7
W-Germanic
Old Frisian:	sin/sene/sini(e)	n	sinew	ASD
Dutch:	zenuw	n	nerve, sinew	TLL
Old High German:	senawa	n	sinew	W7
German:	Sehne	n.fem	sinew	LRC
N-Germanic
Old Norse:	síða	vb	to bewitch, practice sorcery	LRC
Icelandic:	sin	n	sinew	ASD
Italic
Latin:	equisaetum	n.neut	horsetail (plant)	W7
	saeculāris	adj	re: an age, lifetime, generation	W7
	saeculum	n.neut	age, breed, generation	W7
	s(a)eta	n.fem	seta, bristle	W7
	saetiger	adj	setigerous	AHD/CLD
Late Latin:	saecularis	adj	laic, secular	W7
New Latin:	seta	n.fem	seta	W7
Old French:	seculer	adj	laic, secular	W7
French:	pou-de-soie	n.masc	poudesoy	W7/R1

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

Abbrev.		Meaning
adj	=	adjective
fem	=	feminine (gender)
masc	=	masculine (gender)
n	=	noun
neut	=	neuter (gender)
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)
CLD	=	Cassell's Latin Dictionary (1959, rev. 1968)
LRC	=	Linguistics Research Center, University of Texas, Austin
R1	=	Josette Rey-Debove and Alain Rey, eds. Le Nouveau Petit Robert (1993)
TLL	=	Frederick Bodmer: The Loom of Language (1944)
W7	=	Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (1963)

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