West Germanic

Variant of Germanic

Germanic definition

Ger·manic (jər man′ik)

adjective

  1. Now Rare German
  2. designating or of a group of N European peoples including the Germans, Scandinavians, Dutch, English, etc., or the peoples from whom they are descended
  3. designating or of the language group Germanic

Etymology: L Germanicus, of the Germans: orig. applied to a particular tribe, prob. Celtic

noun

  1. Obsolete Proto-Germanic
  2. a principal branch of the Indo-European family of languages, comprising the languages descended from Proto-Germanic: it is divided into three groups
    East Germanic (including Gothic), North Germanic (Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, Old Norse, etc.), and West Germanic (English, Dutch, German, Yiddish, Frisian, etc.)

Webster's New World College Dictionary Copyright © 2009 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Cleveland, Ohio.
Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Comments
Improve this definition.
Do you have more to add? Share your linguistic knowledge or observation.
/Register to save your comments.