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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: (s)nē-, and (s)nēi- 'to spin, twist threads together'

Semantic Field: to Spin

Indo-European Reflexes:

Family/Language	Reflex(es)	PoS/Gram.	Gloss	Source(s)
Celtic
Old Irish:	snāth	n.masc	thread	GED
	snī	vb	to spin, twist	GED
Old Breton:	notenn	n	thread	GED
Cornish:	nethe	vb	to spin, twist	GED
Welsh:	nyddu	vb	to spin, twist	GED
English
Old English:	nǣdl	n.fem	needle	GED
	snōd	n.fem	snood	W7
Middle English:	nedle	n	needle	W7
	snood	n	snood	W7
English:	axoneme	n	cytoskeletal structure in cilium	AHD
	chromonema	n	coiled filamentous chromatid core	AHD/W7
	Náli	prop.n	dwarf in Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings	LRC
	needle	n	small slender bone/steel tool used for sewing	AHD/W7
	protonema	n	primary filamentous thalloid gametophyte stage	AHD/W7
	snood	n	band/fillet for woman's hair	AHD/W7
	treponema	n	spirochete parasite of warm-blooded animals	AHD/W7
W-Germanic
Old Frisian:	nēdle	n	needle	GED
	nēlde	n	needle	GED
Dutch:	naald	n	needle	TLL
Old Saxon:	nāðla	n	needle	GED
Old High German:	nādala	n.fem	needle	GED
	*nāen	vb.wk	to sew	GED
	nājan	vb	to sew	W7
	nālda	n.fem	needle	GED
	nāwen	vb.wk	to sew	GED
German:	Nadel	n.fem	needle	LRC
	nähen	vb	to sew	GED
N-Germanic
Old Norse:	Náli	prop.n	Nali (Voluspa dwarf)	LRC
Old Icelandic:	nāl	n	needle	GED
Icelandic:	nál	n	needle	ASD
Danish:	naal	n	needle	TLL
Swedish:	nål	n	needle	TLL
E-Germanic
Gothic:	*neþla	n.fem	needle	GED
Italic
Latin:	nēmen	n.neut	web	GED
	neō, nēre	vb	to spin	GED
New Latin:	chromonema	n.neut	chromonema	W7
	protonema, protonematis	n.fem	protonema	W7
	treponema	n.fem	treponema, (genus of) spirochete	W7
Baltic
Lithuanian:	nýtis	n	loom reed	GED
Hellenic
Homeric Greek:	νέω	vb	to spin	GED
	νη̃μα	n.neut	web, thread, yarn	GED
Greek:	νήθω	vb	to spin	GED

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

Abbrev.		Meaning
fem	=	feminine (gender)
masc	=	masculine (gender)
n	=	noun
neut	=	neuter (gender)
prop	=	proper
vb	=	verb
wk	=	weak (inflection)

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)
GED	=	Winfred P. Lehmann: A Gothic Etymological Dictionary (1986)
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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