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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: 5. ser-, extended serp- 'sickle'

Semantic Field: Scythe, Sickle

Indo-European Reflexes:

Family/Language	Reflex(es)	PoS/Gram.	Gloss	Source(s)
English
English:	harpoon	n	barbed spear/javelin	AHD/W7
	sarmentose	adj	producing slender prostrate branches/runners	AHD/W7
W-Germanic
Dutch:	harpoen	n	harpoon	W7
German:	Harpune	n.fem	harpoon	LRC
Italic
Latin:	sarmentosus	adj	haing twigs/sarments	W7
	sarmentum	n.neut	twig	W7
	sarpo, sarpere	vb	to prune	W7
Old French:	harper	vb	to grapple	W7
	harpon	n.masc	brooch	W7
French:	harpon	n.masc	harpoon	LRC
Hellenic
Greek:	ἁρπαγή	n.fem	abduction	LRC
	ἁρπάζω	vb	to carry off	LRC

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

Abbrev.		Meaning
adj	=	adjective
fem	=	feminine (gender)
masc	=	masculine (gender)
n	=	noun
neut	=	neuter (gender)
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)
LRC	=	Linguistics Research Center, University of Texas, Austin
W7	=	Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (1963)

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