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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: n̥dhos, n̥dheri 'under'

Semantic Fields: Deep; Low

Indo-European Reflexes:

Family/Language	Reflex(es)	PoS/Gram.	Gloss	Source(s)
English
Old English:	under	prep	under, among, before, during	W7/ASD
	underneoþan	adv/prep	underneath	W7/ASD
Middle English:	inferior	adj	inferior	W7
	infernal	adj	infernal	W7
	under	prep	under	W7
	undernethe	prep/adv	underneath	W7
English:	inferior	adj	lower, situated below	AHD/W7
	infernal	adj	re: nether world of dead	AHD/W7
	inferno	n	place/state resembling/suggesting hell	AHD/W7
	infra-	pfx	below	AHD/W7
	U-boat	prop.n	Austro-Hungarian/German submarine	LRC
	under	adv/prep	in(to) position below/beneath something	AHD/W7
	Underharrow	prop.n	Rohan village in Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings	LRC
	Underhill	prop.n	Hobbiton family in Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings	LRC
	underneath	prep	directly below, close beneath	AHD/W7
	Undertowers	prop.n	Shire town in Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings	LRC
W-Germanic
Old Frisian:	under	prep/adv	under	ASD
Dutch:	onder	prep	under	TLL
Old Saxon:	undar	prep/adv	under	ASD
Old High German:	untar	prep/adv	under	W7
German:	U-boot	n.neut	U-boat	W7
	unter	prep	under	LRC
	Unterseeboot	n.neut	submarine, lit. undersea boat	W7
N-Germanic
Icelandic:	undir	prep/adv	under	ASD
Danish:	under	prep	in, during, under	TLL
Swedish:	under	prep	in, during, under	TLL
E-Germanic
Gothic:	undar	prep/adv	under	ASD
Italic
Latin:	inferior	adj.comp	inferior, less good	W7
	inferus, inferi	adj/n.neut	low, nether; lower part	LRC
	infrā	adv/prep	below, under	W7
Late Latin:	infernalis	adj	infernal	W7
	infernus	adj	infernal, of hell, under the earth	W7
Old French:	infernal	adj	infernal, of hell	W7
Italian:	fra	prep	in	TLL
	infèrno	n.masc	hell, horror, inferno	W7
Indic
Sanskrit:	adha	prep	under, below	W7

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

Abbrev.		Meaning
adj	=	adjective
adv	=	adverb(ial)
comp	=	comparative
masc	=	masculine (gender)
n	=	noun
neut	=	neuter (gender)
pfx	=	prefix
prep	=	preposition
prop	=	proper

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)
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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