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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. sp(h)ei : sp(h)ī̆, and sp(h)ē : sp(h)ə- 'to pull, drag'

Semantic Field: to Draw, Pull

Indo-European Reflexes:

Family/Language	Reflex(es)	PoS/Gram.	Gloss	Source(s)
English
Old English:	spann	n.fem	span	W7/IEW
	spannan/sponnan	vb	to span, bind	IEW/CDC
Middle English:	span(ne)/sponne	n	span	W7/CDC
	spannen	vb	to span	CDC
English:	span	n	distance between ends of thumb/little finger on spread hand	AHD/W7
	span	vb	to reach, stretch, extend, connect	LRC
	spancel	n	tether, rope for hobbling animal	AHD
	spanner	n	wrench	AHD/W7
W-Germanic
Middle Dutch:	spannen	vb	to span, bind, hitch up	W7
Old High German:	spanna	n	span	W7/IEW
	spannan	vb	to span	CDC
German:	spannen	vb	to span	W7
	Spanner	n.masc	press; spanner	W7
N-Germanic
Old Norse:	spenna, spennat	vb	to span, clasp	LRC
Icelandic:	spenna	vb	to span, clasp	ASD
	spönn	n.fem	span	ASD
Danish:	spænde	vb	to span, strain	CDC
Swedish:	spänna	vb	to span, strain	CDC
Hellenic
Greek:	σπάω	vb	to draw, pull, drag	IEW

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

Abbrev.		Meaning
fem	=	feminine (gender)
masc	=	masculine (gender)
n	=	noun
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)
CDC	=	W.D. Whitney and B.E. Smith: The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia (1889-1911)
IEW	=	Julius Pokorny: Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (1959)
LRC	=	Linguistics Research Center, University of Texas, Austin
W7	=	Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (1963)

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