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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: kakka- 'to cack, defecate (nursery word)'

Semantic Field: to Void Excrement; Dung, Excrement

Indo-European Reflexes:

Family/Language	Reflex(es)	PoS/Gram.	Gloss	Source(s)
Celtic
Old Irish:	cacc	n	cack	W2I
Middle Irish:	caccaid	vb	to cack	EIE
Welsh:	cach	vb	to cack	EIE
English
Old English:	cac	n.masc	cack	ASD
	cac-hūs	n.neut	privy, latrine	ASD
Middle English:	cakken/cakken	vb	to cack	W2I/AHD
English:	caca	n	dung, feces, ordure, excrement	LRC
	caca	n.sl	heroin	LRC
	cack	n	caca; muck	W2I
	cack	vb.dial	to shit, defecate	W2I
	cac(o)-	pfx	bad	AHD
	cacophony	n	dissonance, jarring discordant sound	AHD
	poppycock	n	nonsense, empty talk	AHD/W7
W-Germanic
Middle Dutch:	kacken	vb	to cack	AHD
Dutch:	kak	n.masc	cack	W7/ASD
	kakken	vb	to cack	AHD
	pappekak	n	poppycock, lit. soft cack	W7
German:	Kacke	n.fem	caca	LRC
N-Germanic
Old Norse:	*kūka	vb	to cack	AHD
Danish:	kag	n.masc/fem	cack	ASD
Italic
Latin:	cacō, cacāre, cacāvī, cacātus	vb	to cack, pass, void	ELD
Spanish:	caca	adj/n	dirty; caca	LRC
Slavic
Russian:	kákatĭ	vb	to cack	EIE
Hellenic
Greek:	κακκάω	vb	to cack	LS
	κάκκη	n.fem	caca	LS
	κακός	adj	bad, poor, evil, caco-	LS
Armenian
Armenian:	k'akor	n	caca	EIE

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

Abbrev.		Meaning
adj	=	adjective
dial	=	dialectal
fem	=	feminine (gender)
masc	=	masculine (gender)
n	=	noun
neut	=	neuter (gender)
pfx	=	prefix
sl	=	slang
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)
EIE	=	J.P. Mallory and D.Q. Adams, eds. Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture (1997)
ELD	=	Charlton T. Lewis: An Elementary Latin Dictionary (1999)
LRC	=	Linguistics Research Center, University of Texas, Austin
LS	=	Liddell and Scott: Greek-English Lexicon, 7th-9th ed's (1882-1940), rev.
W2I	=	Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language, 2nd ed. (1959)
W7	=	Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (1963)

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