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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: phō̆l- 'to fall'

Semantic Field: to Fall

Indo-European Reflexes:

Family/Language	Reflex(es)	PoS/Gram.	Gloss	Source(s)
English
Old English:	befeallan	vb	to fall, befall	AHD
	feall/fiell	n.masc	fall, ruin, death	RPN/ASD
	feallan, fēol(l), fēollon, feallen	vb.str.intrans	to fall (down), fail	RPN/ASD
	fellan/fyllan	vb.wk	to fell	W7/ASD
	fiellan	vb	to fell, kill	RPN
Middle English:	bifallen	vb	to befall	AHD
	blindfelden	vb	to blindfold, strike blind	W7
	blindfellen	vb	to blindfold	W7
	fallen	vb	to fall	W7
	fellen	vb	to fell	W7
English:	befall, befell, befallen	vb.str	to happen (to)	AHD
	blindfold	vb.trans	to cover eyes with bandage	AHD/W7
	fall, fell, fallen	vb.str.intrans	to descend freely from pull of gravity	AHD/W7
	fell	vb.wk.trans	to cut/beat/knock down	AHD/W7
W-Germanic
Old Frisian:	falla	vb	to fall	ASD
Frisian:	fallan	vb	to fall	ASD
Dutch:	vallen	vb	to fall	ASD
Old Saxon:	fallan	vb	to fall	ASD
Old High German:	fallan	vb	to fall	W7
Middle High German:	vallen	vb	to fall	ASD
German:	fallen	vb	to fall	ASD
N-Germanic
Old Norse:	falla	vb	to fall (down), be slain; flow	LRC
Old Icelandic:	fall	n	fall, ruin, death	RPN
	fella	vb	to fell, kill	RPN
Icelandic:	falla	vb	to fall	ASD
Danish:	falde	vb	to fall	ASD
Swedish:	falla	vb	to fall	ASD
Baltic
Lithuanian:	pùlti, púola, púolė	vb	to attack, assault, fall upon	LRC
Armenian
Armenian:	pʰlanim	vb	to fall in	RPN

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

Abbrev.		Meaning
intrans	=	intransitive
masc	=	masculine (gender)
n	=	noun
str	=	strong (inflection)
trans	=	transitive
vb	=	verb
wk	=	weak (inflection)

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
RPN	=	Allan R. Bomhard: Reconstructing Proto-Nostratic (2002)
W7	=	Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (1963)

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