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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: 2. peis-, speis- 'to blow, fizz'

Semantic Field: to Blow

Indo-European Reflexes:

Family/Language	Reflex(es)	PoS/Gram.	Gloss	Source(s)
English
Old English:	*fīstan	vb	to fist	OED
	fisting	n	fist	IEW
Middle English:	fiesten	vb	to fist	OED
	spirit	n	spirit	W7
English:	fist	n.obs	fart, stink, foul smell	OED
	fist	vb.obs	to fart, break wind	OED
	fizz	vb	to hiss, whiz, sputter, effervesce	W7
	fizzle	vb	to fizz; fail/end feebly	AHD/W7
	spirit	n	vital/animating life principle	W7
W-Germanic
Middle Dutch:	veest	n	fist	OED
Dutch:	veest	n	fist	IEW
	veesten/vijsten	vb	to fist	OED
	vijst	n	fist	OED
Middle High German:	vīsen/visten	vb	to fist	IEW
	vist	n	fist	IEW
German:	fispern/fispeln	vb	to fizz	IEW
N-Germanic
Old Norse:	fīsa	vb	to fist	W7/IEW
Norwegian:	fisa	vb	to fist, blow	IEW
Danish:	fise	vb	to fist	OED
Italic
Latin:	spīritus	n.masc	breath, soul, spirit	IEW
	spīro, spīrare	vb	to blow, breathe	IEW
Old French:	spirit	n	spirit	W7
Slavic
Old Church Slavonic:	piskati	vb	to hiss, wheeze, whistle	IEW

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

Abbrev.		Meaning
masc	=	masculine (gender)
n	=	noun
obs	=	obsolete
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)
IEW	=	Julius Pokorny: Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (1959)
LRC	=	Linguistics Research Center, University of Texas, Austin
OED	=	James A.H. Murray et al: The Oxford English Dictionary (1933)
W7	=	Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (1963)

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