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This etymology seems unlikely to me for several reasons: A long o-grade in a Greek agent noun in -ter is at best unusual. I can't think of another such example, at any rate. … Of course, one could invoke folk etymology here, so this isn't conclusive. The vowel in the first syllable in the more common forms of the name, Δημήτηρ / Δαμάτηρ, cannot come from PIE *ō. …

Gesenius's Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon states that it is the present participle of a root ayin-waw-dalet, meaning 'return' or 'repeat', with an Arabic cognate `āda -- the idea apparently being that a w …

In Latin the two words are unrelated. The basic meaning of vīcus (of which your form vīcī is the genitive) is actually "district, neighborhood, village, etc.", although it does also sometimes mean "ro …

One of the Proto-Indo-European words for "son" appears to have been *suHnús (Skt. sūnú-, Goth. sunus, etc.). The word for "daughter-in-law" is reconstructed as *snusós (Lat. nurus, Gk. νυός, etc.). Co …

This arguably happens in cases where what are historically homonyms come to be perceived as a single lexeme. Consider English ear (body part) and ear (part of a plant, e.g. of corn). Many or most spea …

Many Latin and Greek words can be traced back to PIE, though others cannot (sometimes because they're borrowings from other languages, sometimes because their etymology is unknown). …

These definitions aren't contradictory: they all refer to physical contact with some unspecified amount of pressure, and with the possibility of simultaneous movement along the surface. The resulting …

This isn't an example of antonymy, but of accidental similarity. The Latin prefix sub- could be assimilated into sur- before an r. This is not the same as French sur 'over', which is from Latin super. …

To answer your second question first -- yes, in the combination γγ the first gamma is always pronounced as a nasal, e.g. ἄγγελος angelos (not aggelos). To the question in your title, no, there is no …

What are some examples of negators that have a known (or even conjectured) etymology? What kinds of non-negative meanings can develop into negative meanings? …

To answer your first question, the page you cite is confusing cognacy with derivation. Latin spondeō and Greek σπένδω come from the same Proto-Indo-European root, but I see no particular reason to thi …

It has cognates in many other Semitic languages, all with the same meaning "give birth", so I would say that that is the "essence of its meaning". (I've never seen this root used to mean "travail", by …

I don't have a source for this at hand, but I would assume that the -anus suffix originated in a-stems: that is, the original suffix was -nus, but added to an a-stem it was -a-nus. This -anus would th …

The main PIE feminine derivational suffix was -ih2: compare *deiu-o- 'god' with *deiu-ih2 'goddess' (Skt. devī). Incidentally, this suffix is actually the indirect source of the Greek suffix -ssa: wh …

The sense "bind" gives a noun for a thing you bind with, i.e. a "thong" or "strap"; this in turn comes to mean "whip" because a whip and a thong are similar things; and on this is based a verb meaning …