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.

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: smē-, smeī-, sm-ei- 'to rub, smear'

Semantic Field: to Rub

Indo-European Reflexes:

Family/Language	Reflex(es)	PoS/Gram.	Gloss	Source(s)
English
Old English:	smītan, smāt, smiton, smiten	vb.str	to smite	W7/ASD
Middle English:	immaculat	adj	immaculate	W7
	maculaten	vb	to maculate	W7
	maille	n	mail	W7
	smiten	vb	to smite	W7
	tramayle	n	trammel	W7
English:	chylomicron	n	emulsified fat formed during digestion	AHD
	immaculate	adj	pure, having no stain/blemish	AHD/W7
	mackle	n	blur/double impression on printed sheet	AHD/W7
	macle	n	twin crystal	AHD/W7
	macula	n	spot, blotch, macule	AHD/W7
	maculate	vb.trans	to spot, speckle	AHD/W7
	macule	n	patch of skin changed in color	AHD/W7
	mail	n	armor made from metal links/plates	AHD/W7
	maillot	n	tights for dancers/gymnasts	AHD/W7
	maquette	n	small preliminary model	AHD/W7
	maquis	n	thick scrubby Mediterranean underbrush	AHD/W7
	mica	n	colored/transparent silicate mineral	AHD/W7
	micr(o)-	pfx	small, tiny, minute	AHD
	microfiche	n	card/sheet of microfilm	AHD
	microfilm	n	photographic record of reduced-size image(s)	W7
	micron	n	unit of length: millionth of meter	AHD/W7
	omicron	n	15th letter of Greek alphabet	AHD
	smite, smote, smitten	vb.str	to strike sharply/heavily	AHD/W7
	trammel	n	net for catching birds/fish	AHD/W7
W-Germanic
Old High German:	bismīzan	vb	to defile	W7
	masca	n	mesh	W7
N-Germanic
Old Norse:	smár	adj	small, little	LRC
Italic
Latin:	immaculatus	adj	pure, immaculate	W7
	macula, maculae	n.fem	stain, spot	LRC
	maculatus	vb.ptc	stained, spotted, dirty	W7
	maculō, maculāre	vb	to stain, dirty	W7
	mica	n.fem	grain, crumb	W7
	mitto, mittere	vb	to send, let go	W7
Late Latin:	tremaculum	n.neut	net	W7
New Latin:	micron	n.neut	micron: unit of length	W7
Middle French:	maille	n.fem	mail	W7
	tremail	n.masc	net	W7
French:	macle	n.masc	one lozenge surrounding another (heraldic paintings)	W7/R1
	macule	n.fem	stain, spot	W7
	maculé	adj	stained, spotted	W7
	maillot	n	maillot	W7
	maquette	n	maquette	W7
	maquis	n	maquis	W7
Hellenic
Homeric Greek:	(σ)μῑκρός	adj	small, little	LRC

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

Abbrev.		Meaning
adj	=	adjective
fem	=	feminine (gender)
masc	=	masculine (gender)
n	=	noun
neut	=	neuter (gender)
pfx	=	prefix
ptc	=	participle
str	=	strong (inflection)
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
R1	=	Josette Rey-Debove and Alain Rey, eds. Le Nouveau Petit Robert (1993)
W7	=	Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (1963)

Nearby etyma: previous | next