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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: 4. mel- 'big, strong'

Semantic Fields: Big, Large, Great; Strong, Mighty, Powerful

Indo-European Reflexes:

Family/Language	Reflex(es)	PoS/Gram.	Gloss	Source(s)
English
Middle English:	multi-	pfx	multi-	W7
	multitude	n	multitude	W7
English:	ameliorate	vb	to improve, make/grow better	AHD/W7
	meliorate	vb	to improve, make/become better	AHD/W7
	meliorism	n	belief that society tends to improve itself	AHD
	molto	adv	much, very	AHD/W7
	multi-	pfx	many, multiple	AHD/W7
	multipara	n	female that has borne offspring 2+ times	CDC
	multiple	adj	more than one	AHD/W7
	multiplex	adj	re: multiple parts/elements	AHD
	multiply	vb	to increase in number	W7
	multitude	n	state of being many/numerous	AHD/W7
	multivoltine	adj	producing several broods per season	AHD
Italic
Latin:	melior	adj.comp	better	W7
	melius	adv	better	LRC
	multi-	pfx	mutliple	W7
	multitudo, multitudinis	n.fem	multitude	LRC
	multum	adv	greatly	LRC
	multus, multa, multum	adj	much, many	LRC
Late Latin:	meliorō, meliorāre, meliorāvī, meliorātus	vb	to make better	W7
Middle French:	multi-	pfx	many	W7
	multitude	n.fem	multitude	W7
Italian:	molto	adj	much, many	W7
Hellenic
Greek:	μάλα	adv	very	LRC
	μᾶλλον	adv	more and more	LRC

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

Abbrev.		Meaning
adj	=	adjective
adv	=	adverb(ial)
comp	=	comparative
fem	=	feminine (gender)
n	=	noun
pfx	=	prefix
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)
CDC	=	W.D. Whitney and B.E. Smith: The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia (1889-1911)
LRC	=	Linguistics Research Center, University of Texas, Austin
W7	=	Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (1963)

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