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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 - Star

    October theme: Nighttime 🌃

    Teaser

    atrium, arid, Astarte, star, disaster, ash, amaretto, ephemeral

    Full Text

    • Proto-Indo-European *h₂eh₁- to be warm
      • Proto-Indo-European *h₂éh₁tis a warming abstract/action noun
        • Celtic *ātis furnace, kiln
          • Old Irish áith oven, grain kiln
            • Irish áith kiln
          • Celtic *ātinos
            • Brythonic *ọdɨn
              • Cornish *oden
                • Cornish odencolc lime-kiln
              • Welsh odyn …
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  3. 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 αἴθων a …
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  4. Word Family - Fire

    September theme: Fire 🔥

    Introduction

    *péh₂wr̥ means "fire" as an inanimate substance (grammatically neuter), as opposed to *h₁n̥gʷnis, which is animate, elemental fire (grammatically animate in earlier PIE, masculine in later PIE).

    *péh₂wr̥ is though to contain the (é)-wr̥ suffix that derives nouns from roots, though there are no …

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  5. 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 merge *g and *gʷ (Balto-Slavic …

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