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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: persnā, persnī̆-, persno- 'heel'

Semantic Field: Foot

Indo-European Reflexes:

Family/Language	Reflex(es)	PoS/Gram.	Gloss	Source(s)
English
Old English:	fiersn/fyrsn	n.fem	heel	W7/ASD
Middle English:	perle	n	pearl	W7
English:	pearl	n	dense lustrous concretion of nacre	AHD/W7
W-Germanic
Old High German:	fërs(a)na/fërsina	n.fem	heel	ASD
Middle High German:	vërsen	n.fem	heel	ASD
German:	Ferse	n.fem	heel	ASD
E-Germanic
Gothic:	fairzna	n.fem	heel	ASD
Italic
Latin:	perna	n.fem	haunch, ham with leg; sea mussel	W7
Vulgar Latin:	pernula	n.fem.dim	little sea mussel	W7
Middle French:	perle	n.fem	pearl	W7
Hellenic
Homeric Greek:	πτέρνη	n.fem	heel	LRC
Indic
Sanskrit:	pārshni	n.masc/fem	heel	ASD

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

Abbrev.		Meaning
dim	=	diminutive
fem	=	feminine (gender)
masc	=	masculine (gender)
n	=	noun

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
W7	=	Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (1963)

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