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  1. Word Family - Combust

    Introduction

    In which we go from Latin ūrō: "I burn" to English bust: "upper torso", with very little semantic or phonological similarity.

    Latin ūrō: "I burn" picks up an extra b- in many inflected forms based on re-analysis of amb-ūrō, leading to Latin bustum: "place for fires".

    Then semantically Latin …

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  2. Word Family - Aidan

    September theme: Fire 🔥

    Teaser

    ether, Aidan, edifice, anneal, estivation

    Full Text

    • Proto-Indo-European *h₂eydʰ- ignite, fire
      • Proto-Indo-European *h₂éydʰ-eti burning, igniting primary verb
        • Indo-Iranian *Háydʰati
          • Indo-Aryan
            • Sanskrit 𑀏𑀥𑀢𑁂 édhate to spread, to grow, to increase, to prosper
        • Hellenic
          • Classical Greek αἴθω aíthō To kindle, to light, to burn
            • Classical Greek …
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  3. Word Family - Ignite

    September theme: Fire 🔥

    Introduction

    Proto-Indo-European had (at least) two words *h₁n̥gʷnis: "fire" (grammatically animate) and *péh₂wr̥ (grammatically inanimate).

    Effectively all descendants of *h₁engʷ- have lost the labialization, so distinguishing it from reconstructed **h₁eng- is not immediately obivous. It mostly survives only in languages that …

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