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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.

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: ghreib- 'to grip, grab'

Semantic Field: to Grasp, Seize, Take Hold of

Indo-European Reflexes:

Family/Language	Reflex(es)	PoS/Gram.	Gloss	Source(s)
English
Old English:	grāpian/grōpian	vb.wk	to grope	W7/ASD
	grīpan, grāp, gripon, gripen	vb.str.I	to grasp, seize	LRC
	grippan	vb	to grip	W7
Middle English:	gripen	vb	to gripe	W7
	grippen	vb	to grip	W7
	gropen	vb	to grope	W7
English:	Grip	prop.n	huge dog in Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings	LRC
	grip	n	strong tenacious grasp; part/device for gripping	W7
	grip	vb.trans	to seize firmly	AHD/W7
	gripe	vb	to grip, seize	AHD/W7
	grippe	n	flu/influenza: acute contagious febrile viral disease	AHD/W7
	grope	vb	to feel about blindly/uncertainly in search	AHD/W7
W-Germanic
Old Frisian:	grīpa	vb	to grasp, seize	ASD
Old Saxon:	grīpan	vb	to grasp, seize	ASD
Old High German:	greifon	vb	to grope, touch	ASD
	grīfan	vb	to grasp	W7
German:	greifen	vb	to grip, grasp	LRC
	Griff	n.masc	grip, handle	LRC
	Grippe	n.fem	grippe	LRC
N-Germanic
Icelandic:	grīpa	vb	to grasp, seize	ASD
E-Germanic
Gothic:	greipan	vb	to grasp, seize	ASD
Italic
French:	grippe	n.fem	grippe	W7
Baltic
Lithuanian:	griebti	vb	to seize, snatch, hold	W7/LD
Latvian:	gribēt, gribu, gribēju	vb	to want	LRC

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

Abbrev.		Meaning
I	=	class 1
fem	=	feminine (gender)
masc	=	masculine (gender)
n	=	noun
prop	=	proper
str	=	strong (inflection)
trans	=	transitive
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)
ASD	=	Joseph Bosworth and T. Northcote Toller: An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (1898)
LD	=	Bronius Piesarskas and Bronius Svecevicius: Lithuanian Dictionary (1994)
LRC	=	Linguistics Research Center, University of Texas, Austin
W7	=	Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (1963)

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