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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: leg^u̯h- 'to move easily'

Semantic Field: to Move

Indo-European Reflexes:

Family/Language	Reflex(es)	PoS/Gram.	Gloss	Source(s)
English
Old English:	lēoht	adj	light, easy	LRC
	lungen	n.fem	lung	W7/ASD
Middle English:	elevaten	vb	to elevate	W7
	legerdemain	n	legerdemain	W7
	levain	n	leaven	W7
	lever	n	lever	W7
	light	adj	light	W7
	lightenen	vb	to lighten	W7
	lighter	n	lighter	W7
	lightes	n.pl	lights	W7
	lunge	n	lung	W7
	releven	vb	to relieve	W7
English:	alleviate	vb.trans	to moderate, make easier to endure	AHD/W7
	carnival	n	pre-Lenten season/festival of merrymaking	AHD/W7
	elevate	vb.trans	to raise, lift up	AHD/W7
	leaven	n	substance (e.g. yeast) producing gas/fermentation in dough/liquid	AHD/W7
	legerdemain	n	sleight of hand	AHD/W7
	lever	n	bar used to pry/dislodge something	AHD/W7
	levity	n	excessive/unseemly frivolity	AHD/W7
	light	adj	not heavy, having little weight	AHD/W7
	lighter	n	large flat-bottomed barge used to load/unload ships	AHD/W7
	Lightfoot	prop.n	Snowmane's dam in Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings	LRC
	lightly	adv	not heavily	LRC
	lights	n.pl	lungs of (slaughtered) animal	IEW/W7
	lung	n	compound saccular thoracic respiratory organ of air-breathing vertebrate	AHD/W7
	mezzo-relievo	n	sculptural relief between bas-/high relief	AHD/W7
	relevant	adj	pertinent, bearing upon matter at hand	AHD/W7
	relieve	vb	to succor, free from evil/burden/distress	AHD/W7
W-Germanic
Old Frisian:	līcht	adj	light, easy	ASD
Middle Dutch:	lichten	vb	to unload	W7
	lichter	n	lighter	W7
Dutch:	long	n	lung	TLL
Old Saxon:	līht(līc)	adj/adv	light(ly)	ASD
Old High German:	līhti	adj	light, easy	W7
	lungun/lung(in)a	n.fem	lung	W7/ASD
German:	leicht	adj	light, easy	ASD
	Lunge	n.fem	lung	ASD
N-Germanic
Icelandic:	léttr	adj	light, easy	ASD
	lungu	n.pl	lungs	ASD
Danish:	lunge	n	lung	TLL
Swedish:	lunga	n	lung	TLL
E-Germanic
Gothic:	leihts	adj	light, easy	ASD
Italic
Latin:	elevo, elevare, elevavi, elevatus	vb	to raise	W7
	levis	adj	light, smooth, mild	W7
	levitas, levitatis	n.fem	lightness, inconstancy	W7
	levo, levāre	vb	to lift, raise	W7
	relevo, relevare	vb	to raise up, relieve	W7
Vulgar Latin:	levamen	n.neut	leaven	W7
Late Latin:	allevio, alleviare, alleviavi, alleviatus	vb	to make light	W7
Medieval Latin:	relevans, relevantis	adj/vb.ptc	relevant	W7
Old French:	lever	vb	to raise	W7
	levier	n.masc	lever	W7
Middle French:	levain	n.masc	leaven	W7
	relever	vb	to raise, relieve	W7
Italian:	carnevale	n.masc	carnival	W7
	mezzorilievo	n.masc	half-relief	W7
	rilievo	n.masc	relief, remark	W7
Baltic
Lithuanian:	leñgvas, lengvà	adj	light, easy	LRC
Hellenic
Greek:	elachys	adj	small	W7

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

Abbrev.		Meaning
adj	=	adjective
adv	=	adverb(ial)
fem	=	feminine (gender)
masc	=	masculine (gender)
n	=	noun
neut	=	neuter (gender)
pl	=	plural (number)
prop	=	proper
ptc	=	participle
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)
IEW	=	Julius Pokorny: Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (1959)
LRC	=	Linguistics Research Center, University of Texas, Austin
TLL	=	Frederick Bodmer: The Loom of Language (1944)
W7	=	Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (1963)

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