The University of Texas at Austin; College of Liberal Arts

Keep dead languages alive

We need your help to preserve & document ancient languages. Participate today.

Hans C. Boas, Director :: PCL 5.556, 1 University Station S5490 :: Austin, TX 78712 :: 512-471-4566

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: ēt-mén- 'breath'

Semantic Field: to Breathe; Breath

Indo-European Reflexes:

Family/Language	Reflex(es)	PoS/Gram.	Gloss	Source(s)
English
Old English:	ǣþm/ēðm	n.masc	scent, breath, vapor, emanation	KEW/ASD
English:	atman	n	innermost essence of individual (Hinduism)	AHD/W7
W-Germanic
Old Frisian:	ādema/ethma	n.masc	breath, vapor	ASD
Dutch:	adem	n.masc	breath	TLL/ASD
Old Saxon:	āðom	n.masc	breath, vapor	ASD
Old High German:	ātum/ātam	n.masc	breath	W7/ASD
Middle High German:	ātem	n.masc	breath	ASD
German:	Atem	n.masc	breath, breathing, respiration	LRC
Indic
Sanskrit:	ātman	n	breath, soul	W7

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

Abbrev.		Meaning
masc	=	masculine (gender)
n	=	noun

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)
KEW	=	Gerhard Köbler: Altenglisches Wörterbuch, 2nd ed. (2003)
LRC	=	Linguistics Research Center, University of Texas, Austin
TLL	=	Frederick Bodmer: The Loom of Language (1944)
W7	=	Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (1963)

Nearby etyma: previous | next