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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. su̯er- 'to buzz, hiss'

Semantic Field: Sound (n)

Indo-European Reflexes:

Family/Language	Reflex(es)	PoS/Gram.	Gloss	Source(s)
English
Old English:	swearm/swearrn	n.masc	swarm, crowd	W7
Middle English:	swarm	n	swarm	W7
English:	absurd	adj	ridiculously unsound/incongruous/unreasonable	AHD/W7
	hyrax	n	shrewmouse, small ungulate mammal	AHD/W7
	sordino	n	mute	AHD/W7
	soricine	adj	resembling shrew	AHD/W7
	sourdine	n	musical instrument with muted tone	AHD/W7
	surd	adj	irrational	AHD/W7
	susurration	n	murmur, soft rustling/whispering sound	AHD
	swarm	n	great number (e.g. of bees)	AHD/W7
	swirl	vb	to eddy, move with twisting/whirling motion	AHD
W-Germanic
Dutch:	zwerm	n.masc	swarm, crowd	ASD
Old High German:	swar(a)m	n.masc	swarm	W7/ASD
German:	Schwarm	n.masc	swarm	LRC
N-Germanic
Icelandic:	svarmr	n.masc	swarm, tumult	ASD
Danish:	sværm	n.masc	swarm, rioting	ASD
Swedish:	swärm	n.masc	swarm	ASD
Italic
Latin:	absurdus, absurda, absurdum	adj	absurd, silly	W7
	sorex, soricis	n.masc	mouse	W7
	soricinus	adj	re: mice	W7
	surdus, surda, surdum	adj	surd, deaf, silent, stupid	W7
	susurrus	n.masc	hum	W7
Middle French:	absurde	adj	absurd	W7
French:	sourdine	n.fem	sordino	W7
Italian:	sordina	n.fem	sordino	W7
	sordino	n.masc	sordino	W7
	sordo	adj	deaf, silent, dull-sounding	W7
Hellenic
Greek:	hyrax	n.masc	hyrax	W7

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

Abbrev.		Meaning
adj	=	adjective
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)
LRC	=	Linguistics Research Center, University of Texas, Austin
W7	=	Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (1963)

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