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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 and fonts spanning the Unicode 3 character set relevant to Indo-European languages. Versions of this page rendered in alternate character sets are available via links (see Unicode 2 and ISO-8859-1) in the left margin.

Pokorny Etymon: 2. bel- 'strong'

Semantic Field: Strong, Mighty, Powerful

Indo-European Reflexes:

Family/Language	Reflex(es)	PoS/Gram.	Gloss	Source(s)
English
Middle English:	debylite	n	debility	CDC
English:	Bolshevik	prop.n	1917 Russian Revolutionary Communist	LRC
	debilitate	vb.trans	to weaken, enfeeble, impair strength	AHD/W7
	debility	n	weakness, infirmity	AHD/W7
Italic
Latin:	debilis	adj	weak, lit. not strong	W7
	debilitas, debilitatis	n.fem	debility	W7
	debilito, debilitāre, debilitātus	vb	to debilitate	W7
Portuguese:	debilidade	n	debility	CDC
Spanish:	debilidad	n	debility	CDC
Old French:	debilite	n	debility	CDC
Middle French:	debilité	n.fem	debility	W7
Italian:	debilità	n	debility	CDC
Slavic
Old Church Slavonic:	bol'ьi	adj.comp	more, bigger	LRC
	bolьnъ	adj	sick	LRC
	bolěznь	n.fem	sickness	LRC
	bolěti, bolǫ, boliši	vb	to be ill	LRC

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

Abbrev.		Meaning
adj	=	adjective
comp	=	comparative
fem	=	feminine (gender)
n	=	noun
prop	=	proper
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)
CDC	=	W.D. Whitney and B.E. Smith: The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia (1889-1911)
LRC	=	Linguistics Research Center, University of Texas, Austin
W7	=	Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (1963)

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