| Today's Word: | *sneigwh- |
| Translation: | snow |
| Related to: | Greek nix, nifos (snow), neifei (it snows) - the sound -f- witnesses the stem used to have a labiovelar consonant -gwh- |
| Latin nix, nivis (snow), ninguit
(it snows) - mind the -n- infix;
French neige, Sardinian nie, Ladin naiv, Italian neve, Catalan neu, Spanish nieve, Occitan neu, Portuguese neve |
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| Common Celtic *snig-, > Old Irish snigid (it snows), snechta (snow), Irish sneachta, Scottish sneachtadh | |
| Gothic snaiws (snow), Old High
German snîvit (it snows), Old English snâw (snow),
Old Norse snâer, >
Swedish sno, Danish Norwegian sne, Icelandic snjór, German Schnee, Frisian snie, Dutch sneeuw, Africaans sneeu |
|
| Avestan snaez'aiti (it snows) | |
| Sanskrit snihyati (he gets wet) | |
| Hittite (not found) | |
| Common Baltic *snìg-, > Lithuanian sniega (it snows), snigti (to snow), Latvian snigt, Old Prussian snaygis (snow), Sudovian snaigas | |
| Common Slavic *snìgü (snow), >
Old Church Slavonic snìgü,
Ukrainian snig, Bulgarian sniag, Macedonian sneg, Serbo-Croatian snijeg, Slovene sneg, Czech snih, Slovak sneh, Polish s'nieg, Upper Sorbian snìh, Lower Sorbian snìg, Polabian snêg, Russian sneg, snezhit' (to snow). |
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| Notes: | In any case the presence of this stem in so
many Indo-European languages proves that Proto-Indo-Europeans lived in
the region where it snowed. And the meaning is primary, though in some
languages could be lost (like Sanskrit), or mixed with the meaning "winter".
The initial s- was, probably, subject to some mutations in Proto-Indo-European, so Greek and Italic languages do not have it. |
