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1. Word Family - Millenial

   Introduction

   In each Hellenic, Indo-Iranian, and Italic the word for "thousand" is derived from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰéslo-—apparently "handful"?—but in different forms.

   Greek χίλιοι khílioi (kilo-) seems to derive from *ǵʰesliyoy, possibly a plural adjective form?

   In Indo-Iranian it's prefixed with *sem- as *sm̥-ǵʰéslom, which could be translated as …

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2. Word Family - Middle

   Introduction

   The particle *me meaning "with, at, between" is probably the origin of *médʰyos: "middle"—in turn the origin of many, many words.

   I wonder if *meh₁-: "to measure" and *meh₁d-: "to consider, to give advice, to heal" isn't also from *me. Germanic *midlą for example sometimes means "middle" but …

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3. Word Family - Honu

   Introduction

   One final "turtle" word: "honu"

   It is very tempting to unify *pəñu: "sea turtle" with *pəNuʔ: "to fill, full, container". And *pəNuʔ: "full" has potential cognates in the possible Sino-Austronesian macrofamily/Southeast Asian historic sprachbund.

   And then at that point you're speculating a link between "green sea turtles" and …

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4. Word Family - Five

   Introduction

   I've been doing Word Families for 5 years! In that time, I have made 150 families! So this week is *pénkʷe: "five".

   The *p-kʷ sequence in *pénkʷe leads to a set highly divergent forms. *kʷ is a highly variable sound on its own, becoming /kw/, /w/, /ʍ/, /k/, /t …

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5. Word Family - Four

   April theme: 🦠

   Introduction

   *kʷetwer- is too long for a root. The feminine root suggests that there may have been an original root of just *kʷet-. There are also several reasons to believe that none of this is the original word for four:

   • Hittite's word for "four", meyawes, is unrelated (Hittite …

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6. Word Family - Centum

   January theme: 98, 99, 100! 💯

   Introduction

   This is the 100th Word Family Friday in 100 weeks, and the last before I take a break for a few weeks to work on infrastructure and pad my buffer. I originally had a different idea, but then I realized I of course had …

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7. Word Family - Celts

   June theme: Celtic Iron Age

   Introduction

   June's theme is linguistic influence early Iron Age Celtic. The rest of the month will focus on words that were borrowed from Gaulish into Latin (more things like the aside in today's families that the very iconic Latin word gladius being borrowed from Gaulish …

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8. Word Family - Seven

   July theme: Miscellaneous 🔨

   Introduction

   For 2017-07-07, I just had to do "seven".

   It may seems strange to see the word for "seven" borrowed around between so many different language families, when the numbers 1-10 are so highly conserved in descendants of (post-Anatolian) Proto-Indo-European. But 10-based number systems seem to not …

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9. Word Family - Two

   June theme: Pride In Words 🏳️‍🌈

   Teaser

   two, neodymium, duet, biceps, bi-, biscuit, duplicate, Maldives, doppelganger, icosahedron, twin, nonbinary

   Full Text

   • Proto-Indo-European *dwóh₁ two

     • Old Armenian երկու erku two ^[1]

       • Old Armenian կրկին krkin double, doubled, iterated

         • Armenian կրկին krkin double, again, once more
       • Armenian երկու erku two
     • Italic *duō two …

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