The University of Texas at Austin; College of Liberal Arts

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.

Fans of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings may appreciate the source & meaning tips that pop up when the mouse pointer hovers over a non-obvious word or name that he coined from Indo-European (usually Old English or Old Norse) stock. But only reflexes of PIE etyma can be included, and these tend to concentrate in the vocabulary of Rohan and the Shire.

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: 3. g̑her-, and g̑herə-, g̑hrē- 'to beam, shine, shimmer'

Semantic Field: to Shine, Glisten

Indo-European Reflexes:

Family/Language	Reflex(es)	PoS/Gram.	Gloss	Source(s)
Celtic
Middle Irish:	gerr	adj	short	RPN
	gerraim	vb	to shorten, cut off	RPN
English
Old English:	grǣg/grēg	adj	gray	W7/ASD
	grǣg-hama	adj/n.wk.masc	gray-coated (one, i.e. wolf)	ASD
Middle English:	ambregris	n	ambergris	W7
	gray	adj	re: color gray	W7
	grisel	adj	grizzled	W7
English:	ambergris	n	waxy substance floating in tropical waters	AHD/W7
	gray	adj	re: color gray	AHD/W7
	greige	adj	undyed, unbleached	AHD/W9
	Greyflood	prop.n	Eriador river in Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings	LRC
	Greyhame	prop.n	epithet for Gandalf in Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings	LRC
	greyhound	n	tall slender dog (breed): swift, graceful, smooth-coated	AHD/W7
	grisaille	n	gray monochrome painting	AHD/W7
	griseofulvin	n	antibiotic for fungal infections	AHD/W9
	griseous	adj	grizzled, mottled in color	AHD/W7
	grisette	n	young working-class woman	AHD/W7
	grison	n	gray S American carnivore	AHD
	grizzle	n	gray hair	AHD/W7
W-Germanic
Old Frisian:	grē	adj	gray	ASD
Old High German:	crisil	adj	gray	AHW
	grāo/grāw	adj	gray	W7/ASD
German:	grau	adj	gray	ASD
N-Germanic
Icelandic:	grār	adj	gray	ASD
Italic
Old French:	gris	adj	gray	AHD
Middle French:	gris/grisel	adj	gray	W7
French:	grisaille	n	grisaille	W7
	grisette	n	grisette	W7
Slavic
Old Church Slavonic:	zьrěti, zьr'jǫ, zьriši	vb	to see	LRC
Indic
Sanskrit:	hrásati	vb	to become short/small	RPN
	hrasvá-ḥ	adj	short, small	RPN

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

Abbrev.		Meaning
adj	=	adjective
masc	=	masculine (gender)
n	=	noun
prop	=	proper
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)
AHW	=	Rudolf Schützeichel: Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch (1981)
ASD	=	Joseph Bosworth and T. Northcote Toller: An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (1898)
LRC	=	Linguistics Research Center, University of Texas, Austin
RPN	=	Allan R. Bomhard: Reconstructing Proto-Nostratic (2002)
W7	=	Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (1963)
W9	=	Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (1983)

Nearby etyma: previous | next