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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: 1. su̯er-, also ser-? 'to speak, swear, answer'

Semantic Field: to Speak, Talk

Indo-European Reflexes:

Family/Language	Reflex(es)	PoS/Gram.	Gloss	Source(s)
English
Old English:	andswaru	n.fem	answer, response	LRC
	swerian, swōr, swōron, sworen	vb.str	to swear	W7/ASD
Middle English:	answer	n	answer	W7
	sweren	vb	to swear	W7
English:	answer	n	response to question	AHD/W7
	answer	vb	to respond to question	LRC
	swear, swore, sworn	vb.str	to take/utter (oath) solemnly	AHD/W7
W-Germanic
Old Frisian:	swara/swer(i)a	vb	to swear, make oath	ASD
Old Saxon:	swerian	vb	to swear, make oath	ASD
Old High German:	swer(i)en	vb	to swear	W7/ASD
German:	schwören	vb	to swear	LRC
	Schwur	n.masc	oath, vow	LRC
N-Germanic
Old Norse:	andsvar	n	answer	W7
	svara, svarað	vb	to answer	LRC
Icelandic:	sverja	vb	to swear, make oath	ASD
E-Germanic
Gothic:	swaran	vb	to swear, make oath	ASD
Italic
Latin:	sermo, sermonis	n.masc	language	LRC
Slavic
Russian:	svara	n	altercation	W7

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

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

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