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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: snēu- : snū-, and snĕu- 'to turn, bind, attach; band, sinew'

Semantic Fields: to Turn; to Bind; Rope, Cord

Indo-European Reflexes:

Family/Language	Reflex(es)	PoS/Gram.	Gloss	Source(s)
English
Old English:	snēowan	vb.str	to hasten	GED
	snūþ	n.masc	hurry	GED
	snyþþan	vb.wk	to rush	GED
English:	aponeurosis	n	flat thin dense fascia terminating/attaching to muscle	AHD/W7
	enervate	vb.trans	to lessen vitality/strength of	AHD/W7
	nerve	n	sinew, tendon	AHD/W7
	neuron	n	fundamental cell in nerve tissue	AHD/W7
	neurula	n	embryo in early development	AHD
W-Germanic
German:	Nerv	n.masc	nerve	LRC
N-Germanic
Old Norse:	snúa	vb	to plait, tie, twist, turn	LRC
Old Icelandic:	snera	vb.str.VII.pret	to turn	GED
	snugga	vb.wk	to look	GED
	snūa	vb	to turn	GED
	snūðigr	adj	swift	GED
	snūðr	n	twist, profit	GED
	snūinn	vb.past.ptc	to turn	GED
	snyðja	vb	to rush	GED
Icelandic:	snöggr	adj	sudden	ASD
Danish:	nerve	n	nerve	TLL
Swedish:	nerv	n	nerve	TLL
E-Germanic
Gothic:	*sniwan	vb.str.V	to come upon	GED
Italic
Latin:	enervatus	vb.ptc	weak, lacking energy	W7
	enervo, enervāre	vb	to weaken, take away energy	W7
	nervus, nervi	n.masc	nerve, sinew, muscle	LRC
New Latin:	neuron	n.neut	neuron	W7
Portuguese:	nervo	n	nerve	TLL
Spanish:	nervio	n	nerve	TLL
French:	nerf	n	nerve	TLL
Italian:	nervo	n	nerve	TLL
Baltic
Latvian:	snaujis	n	noose	GED
Slavic
Old Church Slavonic:	o-snovati	vb.past.ptc	found	GED
Russian:	snovatь	vb	to scheme, go quickly back and forth	GED
Hellenic
Greek:	aponeurousthai	vb	to pass into tendon	W7
	aponeurōsis	n.fem	passing into tendon	W7
	νευ̃ρον	n.neut	nerve, sinew	GED
Iranian
Avestan:	snāvarə	n	sinew	GED
Indic
Sanskrit:	snā́va	n	sinew	GED
Tocharian
Tocharian B:	ṣñaura	n	sinews	GED

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

Abbrev.		Meaning
V	=	class 5
VII	=	class 7
adj	=	adjective
fem	=	feminine (gender)
masc	=	masculine (gender)
n	=	noun
neut	=	neuter (gender)
past	=	past (tense)
pret	=	preterite (tense)
ptc	=	participle
str	=	strong (inflection)
trans	=	transitive
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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