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 …
read morebarrel, metaphor, Veronica, amphora, offer, Lucifer, ferret, wheelbarrow, tidal bore, birthday
Proto-Indo-European *h₂ew: "away from, since, again" cannot be formally tied to *h₂epó: "off, away", but the similarity is suggestive. Perhaps Pre-Proto-Indo-European *b became either *p (by fortition) or *w (by lenition) in almost all cases, accounting for the paucity of *b in PIE.
In any case, the later (re …
read morecook, cook, coach, quiche, cake, kitchen, culinary, abrecock, Pepsi-Cola, biscuit, Budapest
June is for Justice. Justice is Life. ✊🏿✊🏽✊🏼 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️
Ayurveda, hygiene, forever, not, age, eternal, medieval, young, June, jury, injury, prejudice, justice
This is quite a large family with a number of borrowings into other language families. Because, it turns out, the Indo-European speakers' relationship with wheels is pretty important in a lot of people's history, like the Sumerians' relationship with reeds.
There is also a root *wel(h₁)-: "to turn …
read moreIn which dryad and druid are basically the same word, trust and tryst, trees and truce. Plus horse racing history.
tree, true, true, endure, druid, dryad, larch, derby, tray, tray
stegosaur, tile, thatch, thatch, deck, deck, toga, detective, thug
bleach, blank, black, blue, beluga, flame, Baltic, pool
Bonus word family for Halloween by special request from my 4 year old: witch from *weyk-: "to separate, to choose, to consecrate".
*weyk- looks like an extended root implying *wey-, but I can't find any clear evidence for that root. If it is an extension of *wey-, a zero-grade …
read moresleep, avalanche, avalanche, lip, lobe, lick, lichen
complete, supply, full, poly-, folk, filbert
column, excel, hill, Celsius, Stockholm, Sherlock Holmes
hall, cellar, eyelid, color, hell, apocalypse
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 …
read moreThis is the family that no matter how long I work on it, it's never done. That's what I get for trying to explore the possibility that two extremely important and productive roots may be connected: *h₂er-, related to cosmic order, and *h₃reǵ-, related to societal …
read moreWe start religion words with *dyḗwos ph₂tḗr, Old Father Shining-Sky himself.
Interestingly English "day" is not from this root, despite similarity to many IE words for "day", e.g. Latin diēs, etc. Germanic *d corresponds to Latin f (PIE *dʰ); Latin d corresponds to Germanic *t …
read morebrew, broil, breed, ferment, burn, bourbon whiskey, broth, bread
The root *h₂ews-: "sunrise" may be connected to *h₂ew-: "away from, since, again" and *h₂ewg-: "to increase, to enlarge", compare for example *h₂éwgeh₂: "sunrise, dawn" (literally, "the increase") from *h₂ewg-.
Eärendil, Easter, air, soar, east, Austria, Australia, early
This is a tricky one—another of these mysterious wanderwords coming out of the steppe. My current best hypothesis, based on the distribution in time and space, is that the Scythians/Northern Iranians picked it up somewhere and spread it around.
Another theory connects …
read moremirror, admire, miracle, Miranda, smile