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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: u̯ai 'woe; wolf'

Semantic Field: Wolf

Indo-European Reflexes:

Family/Language	Reflex(es)	PoS/Gram.	Gloss	Source(s)
English
Old English:	lā	interj	lo!	W7
	wā	interj	woe!	W7
	wālāwā	interj	wellaway!	W7
	weilawei	interj	lit. woe! lo!	W7
Middle English:	wa	interj	woe!	W7
	welaway	interj	wellaway!	W7
	wo	interj	woe! alas!	W7
English:	wail	vb	to lament, express sorrow audibly	AHD/W7
	wellaway	interj	re: sorrow/lamentation	AHD/W7
	woe	interj	re: grief/regret/distress	AHD/W7
	woe	n	deep suffering from grief/misfortune/affliction	AHD/W7
W-Germanic
Dutch:	weinig	adj	few	TLL
Old Saxon:	wē	adv	woe, ill	ASD
	wē	interj	woe!	ASD
Old High German:	wē	adv	woe, ill	ASD
	wē	interj	woe!	ASD
German:	wenig	adj	few	TLL
N-Germanic
Old Norse:	vāla/væla	vb	to wail	W7
	vei	interj	woe!	W7
Icelandic:	vei	adv	woe, ill	ASD
	vei	interj	woe!	ASD
E-Germanic
Gothic:	wai	adv	woe, ill	ASD
	wai	interj	woe!	ASD
Italic
Latin:	vae	interj	woe!	W7

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

Abbrev.		Meaning
adj	=	adjective
adv	=	adverb(ial)
interj	=	interjection
n	=	noun
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
TLL	=	Frederick Bodmer: The Loom of Language (1944)
W7	=	Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (1963)

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