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. k̑uei-, extended kuei-d-, kuei-s-, kuei-t- 'to shine; white'

Semantic Fields: to Shine, Glisten; White

Indo-European Reflexes:

Family/Language	Reflex(es)	PoS/Gram.	Gloss	Source(s)
English
Old English:	hwǣte	n	wheat	W7
	hwīt	adj	white	W7/ASD
Middle English:	whete	n	wheat	W7
	white	adj/n	white	W7
	whiten	vb	to whiten	W7
	whiting	n	whiting	W7
English:	bismuth	n	heavy brittle grayish white trivalent metal	AHD/W7
	edelweiss	n	small perennial composite herb	AHD/W7
	wheat	n	cereal grain yielding fine white flour	AHD/W7
	white	adj/n	reflecting all light/colors; brightest color	AHD/W7
	whiten	vb.trans	to make white	AHD/W7
	Whiteskins	prop.n.pl	a.k.a. Rohirrim in Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings	LRC
	Whitfoot	prop.n	hobbit surname in Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings	LRC
	whiting	n	marine food fish	AHD/W7
	Whitwell	prop.n	Shire village in Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings	LRC
	witloof	n	chicory	AHD/W7
W-Germanic
Old Frisian:	hwīt	adj	white	ASD
Middle Dutch:	wit	adj	white	W7
	witinc	n	whiting	W7
Dutch:	wit	adj	white	W7
	witloof	n	chicory	W7
Old Saxon:	hwīt	adj	white	ASD
Old High German:	(h)wīz	adj	white	W7
	weiz(z)i	n	wheat	W7/KDW
Middle High German:	wise	n	meadow	AHD
German:	Edelweiss	n.neut	edelweiss	W7
	weiss	adj	white	W7
	Weizen	n.masc	wheat	LRC
	Wiese	n.fem	meadow	AHD
	Wismut	n.neut	bismuth	W7
	Wittling	n.masc	whiting	LRC
N-Germanic
Old Norse:	hveiti	n	wheat	KNW
	hvítr	adj	white, shining	LRC
Icelandic:	hvítr	adj	white	ASD
Danish:	hvede	n	wheat	TLL
Swedish:	hvete	n	wheat	TLL
	vit	adj	white	TLL
E-Germanic
Gothic:	ƕaiteis	n	wheat	KGW
	ƕeits	adj	white	LRC
Crimean Gothic:	*wichtgata/vvichtgata	adj	white	CGo
Italic
Medieval Latin:	wismutum	n	bismuth	AHD
New Latin:	bisemūtum	n	bismuth	AHD
Baltic
Lithuanian:	šviesà	n.fem	light	LRC
Slavic
Old Church Slavonic:	světъ	n.masc	light	LRC
Indic
Sanskrit:	śveta	adj	white	W7

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

Abbrev.		Meaning
adj	=	adjective
fem	=	feminine (gender)
masc	=	masculine (gender)
n	=	noun
neut	=	neuter (gender)
pl	=	plural (number)
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)
ASD	=	Joseph Bosworth and T. Northcote Toller: An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (1898)
CGo	=	MacDonald Stearns, Jr: Crimean Gothic (1978)
KDW	=	Gerhard Köbler: Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 4th ed. (1993)
KGW	=	Gerhard Köbler: Gotisches Wörterbuch, 2nd ed. (1989)
KNW	=	Gerhard Köbler: Altnordisches 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