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1. Word Family - Odin

   Teaser

   Odin, Wednesday, Vatican

   Full Text

   • Proto-Indo-European *weh₂t- excited, inspired, possessed, raging

     • Proto-Indo-European *woh₂tos inspired, excited, possessed, raging verbal adjective

       • Old Armenian գութ gutʿ prayer, entreaty, compassion, pity

         • Armenian գութ gutʿ pity, compassion
       • Germanic *wōdaz

         • East Germanic *wōdas

           • Gothic 𐍅𐍉𐌳𐍃 wōds possessed (as by a demon)
         • North Germanic *wōdaʀ

           • Old …

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2. 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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3. Word Family - Wheel

   Introduction

   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 …

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4. Word Family - Venom

   November theme: Spiders 🕷️

   Teaser

   win, wish, Venus, Darwin, vanadium, venom, wonder, winsome

   Full Text

   • Proto-Indo-European *wenh₁- to love, to want

     • Proto-Indo-European *wn̥h₁néwti? variant ne imperfective

       • Germanic *winnaną *gawinnaną to strive, to work, to gain, to win

         • East Germanic

           • Gothic 𐍅𐌹𐌽𐌽𐌰𐌽 / 𐌲𐌰𐍅𐌹𐌽𐌽𐌰𐌽 winnan gawinnan to suffer
         • North Germanic

           • Old Norse …

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5. Word Family - Taran

   February theme: Weather ⛈️

   Teaser

   stun, tornado, detonate, Thor, thunder, blunderbus

   Full Text

   • Proto-Indo-European *stenh₂- *tenh₂- thunder, to be loud, to resound ^[1]

     • Proto-Indo-European *sténh₂eti thunders, resounds

       • Balto-Slavic

         • East Baltic

           • Lithuanian steneti
         • Slavic *stenàti to groan, to moan

           • East Slavic стенати stenati

             • Russian стенать stenatʹ to groan, to moan (archaic)
           • South …

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6. Word Family - Bid

   December theme: Religion 📿

   Introduction

   *bʰewdʰ- vs. *gʷʰedʰ-: two families that end up being super confusing in Germanic languages, since *bʰ and *gʷʰ merge at the beginning of a word. In English, they end up being homophones with complementary/opposite meanings: "offer" vs. "ask for".

   I had to do these two …

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7. Word Family - Diurnal

   December theme: Religion 📿

   Introduction

   We 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 …

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