Next week, the sister of Phoenix.
Greek, Charles, corn, grain, grenade
edema, Oedipus, oat, atter, attercop
win, wish, Venus, Darwin, vanadium, venom, wonder, winsome
spin, spider, span, poise, peso, ponder
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 moreGot out of hand, never managed to finish, as yet.
curve, search, circle, cross, ring, cyborg, clavicle, close
measure, meal, moon, month, medicine, modest, modem
atrium, arid, Astarte, star, disaster, ash, amaretto, ephemeral
to hang loosely, to be weak, lip, to lick
to fall down? to relax?primary verb
to sleep
to sleep
to sleep
naga, naked, gym, night, nocturnal
municipal, common, communicate, Mithra, mix, mutant, miss
to exchange, to intermingle
service, duty, obligation, public office
citizen (duty-taker)
township, town
town council, town hall, government office
The Celtic word *dūnom: "hill fort" was borrowed into Germanic twice, once as "hill" and once as "fort".
The first time was borrowed before the completion of Grimm's Law, so Grimm's Law changed the *d to *t for Germanic *tūną: "enclosure", which eventually gave English "town …
read morecomplete, supply, full, poly-, folk
to fill
in-fill (perfective)
to fill
This word for "guest"/"host" is restricted to the Late Northwest Indo-European languages, appearing—as far as I know—only in Balto-Slavic, Germanic, and Italic, plus a single personal name in Lepontic (Celtic). It seems to be cognate to a word for "to eat" which is …
read moreelse, eldritch, alias, alien, ultimate, outrage, other
android, Andromeda, Alexander, Nero, Andrew
I was preparing a family this week that I thought included the English word wall. But as I researched it, I found that Germanic *waigaz: "wall" connects to that family, but English "wall" is from the unrelated Germanic *wallą from Latin vallum: "wall, rampart".
I took the opportunity to …
read moreto rise, to be tall
to rise
I elevate, I raise up, I rise, I exult, I excel
to excel
hall, cellar, lid, color, hell, apocalypse
to cover
to be covering, to be hidingprimary imperfective
to hide, to conceal
to hide, to conceal
door, hors d'oeuvre, foreign, forum, Dvorak
Apologies for the sketchy nature. This one exploded on me in several different ways.
June's theme is linguistic effects of the Celtic Hegemony of the early Iron Age. The rest of the month will focus on words that were borrowed from Gaulish into Latin (things like very iconic Latin word gladius being borrowed from Gaulish, which appears in …
read morefemale, doe, filial, Tethys, daughter
to produce, to be strong, to be fruitful, to give milk
to milk
pastor, Pan, food, pants, father, pattern
ma: "mother", from Proto-World! Or—more likely—convergent development from onomatopoeia of nursing sounds.
mother, matrix, material, Manchester, mammal
Donald Duck dives to the deep abyss of Dover in a Bathysphere! (What a dope.)
Proto-Indo-European *h₂éwis: "bird" and Proto-Indo-European *h₂ówis: "sheep" appear to be umlaut variants, presumably through the more sparsely attested root *h₂ew-: "to put on clothes, to cover". *h₂éwis: "bird" would be from a passive participle, "a clothed (in feathers)". *h₂ówis: "sheep" from an active participle …
read moremulch, marmalade, Melissa, mead, amethyst, methane
wind, window, nirvana, vent, weather, athlete, fan, atmosphere
stun, tornado, detonate, Thor, thunder, blunderbus
Germanic really went to town with this root, creating a bunch of morphological forms that aren't attested in any other branches, and in a few cases I can't even relate them to any standard derivational forms I know in either PIE or Proto-Germanic.
engineer, nature, genre, Scheherazade, king
lord, ward, guard, warn, garnish, garage, revere, wary, Arthur
isthmus, sudden, transition, count, Mahayana, January