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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: plā̆t-, plā̆d-, plē̆t-, plō̆t-, plət- 'flat, wide, broad; spread out'

Semantic Fields: Flat; Wide, Broad; to Strew, Spread Out

Indo-European Reflexes:

Family/Language	Reflex(es)	PoS/Gram.	Gloss	Source(s)
Celtic
Old Irish:	cland	n.fem	plant, offspring	W7/IED
Scots Gaelic:	clann	n.fem	clan, offspring	W7/GE
English
Old English:	flet(t)	n.neut	floor, ground underfoot	IEW/ASD
	plante	n.fem	plant, shoot	W7/ASD
	plantian	vb	to plant	W7
Middle English:	clan	n	clan	W7
	flat	adj	flat	W7
	flateren	vb	to flatter	W7
	flet	n	flat, ground underfoot	OED
	flounder	n	flounder	W7
	place	n	place	W7
	plaice	n	plaice	W7
	plane	n	plane	W7
	plantain	n	plantain	W7
	plante	n	plant	W7
	planten	vb	to plant	W7
	plate	n	plate	W7
	supplanten	vb	to supplant	W7
	transplaunten	vb	to transplant	W7
English:	clan	n	Celtic households claiming patrilineal descent from common ancestor	AHD/W7
	flan	n	custard dessert	AHD
	flat	adj	having continuous horizontal surface	AHD/W7
	flat	n	floor/story/apartment in building	W7
	flatter	vb	to praise excessively	AHD/W7
	flet	n	tree house in Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings	LRC
	flounder	n	type of flatfish	AHD/W7
	piazza	n	open square in Italian/European town	AHD/W7
	place	n	way for transit/admission	AHD/W7
	plaice	n	flatfish	AHD/W7
	plan	n	drawing/diagram (on flat surface)	AHD/W7
	plane	n	tree with palmately lobed leaves	AHD/W7
	plant	n	young tree/vine/shrub/herb	AHD/W7
	plant	vb	to put/set in ground for growth	AHD/W7
	plantain	n	short-stemmed herb with elliptical leaves	AHD/W7
	plantar	adj	re: sole of foot	AHD/W7
	plate	n	thin flat piece of smooth material	AHD/W7
	plateau	n	tableland, raised land area with level surface	AHD/W7
	platina	n	(impure natural) platinum	AHD
	platinum	n	heavy grayish white precious metal	AHD/W7
	platitude	n	triteness, being dull/insipid	AHD/W7
	platy	n	small stocky Mexican topminnow	AHD/W7
	plaza	n	public square in city/town	AHD/W7
	supplant	vb.trans	to supersede (esp. by force/treachery)	AHD/W7
	transplant	vb	to lift/reset (a plant) in different soil/location	AHD/W7
Scots English:	flet(t)	n	house	ASD
W-Germanic
Old Frisian:	flet	n	house	ASD
Dutch:	plaats	n	place, city	TLL
Old Saxon:	flet(ti)	n.neut	hall, (floor of) house	ASD
Low German:	flet	n	bedroom in upper floor of peasant's house	ASD
Old High German:	flaz	adj	flat	W7
	pflanza	n	plant	ASD
	pflanzōn	vb	to plant	ASD
Middle High German:	vletze	n.neut	floor	ASD
German:	Flunder	n.fem	flounder	LRC
	Pflanze	n.fem	plant	LRC
	pflanzen	vb	to plant	LRC
	Platz	n	plaza	TLL
N-Germanic
Old Norse:	flatr	adj	flat	W7
	flet	n.neut	boards of hall used for seating	LRC
	flyþra	n	flounder	W7
Old Icelandic:	flatr	adj	flat, level	RPN
Icelandic:	flet	n.neut	house, set of rooms	ASD
	planta	n	plant	ASD
	planta	vb	to plant	ASD
Danish:	plads	n	plaza	TLL
Swedish:	flundra	n	plaice, flounder	TLL
Italic
Latin:	planta	n.fem	green twig/graft/cutting; sole of foot	W7
	plantago, plantaginis	n.fem	type of weed	W7
	plantaris	adj	re: sole of foot	W7
	planto, plantāre	vb	to plant	W7
	planum	n.neut	flat ground	W7
	planus	adj	flat, plain	W7
	platanus	n.fem	platane, plane tree	W7
	platea	n.fem	broad street	W7
	supplanto, supplantare	vb	to overthrow by tripping up	W7
Vulgar Latin:	plattus	adj	broad, flat	W7
Late Latin:	planto, plantāre	vb	to plant, fix in place	W7
	platensis	n.fem	type of flatfish	W7
	transplanto, transplantāre	vb	to plant somewhere else	W7
New Latin:	platinum	n.neut	metallic element	W7
	Platypoecilus	n.masc	(genus name)	W7
Old Spanish:	plata	n.fem	silver	W7
Spanish:	plata	n.fem	silver	W7
	platina	n.fem	platinum	W7
	plaza	n.fem	plaza	W7
Old French:	flaon	n	flan	AHD
	plaïs	n.masc	plaice (flatfish)	W7
	plantain	n.masc	type of weed	W7
	plat	adj	flat	W7
	plate	n.fem	plate, (piece of) silver	W7
Middle French:	place	n.fem	open space	W7
	plat	adj	flat	W7
	plat	n.masc	dish, plate	W7
	plateau	n.masc	platter	W7
	supplanter	vb	to supplant	W7
French:	flan	n	flan	AHD
	plafond	n	ceiling	LRC
	plan	n.masc	plan	W7
	plane	n.masc	platane, plane tree	W7
	planter	vb	to plant, fix in place	W7
	plat	adj	dull, flat	W7
	plateau	n.masc	platter	W7
	platitude	n.fem	platitude	W7
Italian:	piazza	n.fem	market, piazza	W7
Hellenic
Greek:	platanos	n.fem	platane, plane tree	W7
	πλατεῖα	n.fem	open space	LS
	πλατύς	adj	flat, wide, broad	RPN
Indic
Sanskrit:	pṛthu	adj	broad	W7

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

Abbrev.		Meaning
adj	=	adjective
fem	=	feminine (gender)
masc	=	masculine (gender)
n	=	noun
neut	=	neuter (gender)
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)
GE	=	Colin Mark: The Gaelic-English Dictionary (2003)
IED	=	Patrick S. Dinneen: An Irish-English Dictionary (1927)
IEW	=	Julius Pokorny: Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (1959)
LRC	=	Linguistics Research Center, University of Texas, Austin
LS	=	Liddell and Scott: Greek-English Lexicon, 7th-9th ed's (1882-1940), rev.
OED	=	James A.H. Murray et al: The Oxford English Dictionary (1933)
RPN	=	Allan R. Bomhard: Reconstructing Proto-Nostratic (2002)
TLL	=	Frederick Bodmer: The Loom of Language (1944)
W7	=	Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (1963)

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