Indo-european meaning

ĭn'dō-yo͝or'ə-pē'ən
A hypothetical speaker of Proto-Indo-European.
noun
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Proto-Indo-European: the hypothetical parent language of the Indo-European language family.
pronoun
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Of or relating to the languages originally spoken in Europe and Western Asia.
adjective
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A member of any of the peoples speaking an Indo-European language.
noun
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A family of languages consisting of most of the languages of Europe as well as those of Iran, the Indian subcontinent, and other parts of Asia.
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Proto-Indo-European.
noun
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Designating or of a family of languages that includes most of those spoken in Europe and many of those spoken in SW Asia and India.
adjective
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The Indo-European family of languages: its principal branches are Albanian, Anatolian, Armenian, Baltic, Celtic, Germanic, Greek, Indic, Iranian (often grouped with Indic as the Indo-Iranian subfamily), Italic, Slavic, and Tocharian.
noun
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The hypothetical language, reconstructed by modern linguists, from which these languages are thought to have descended: in this sense, Proto-Indo-European is now the preferred term.
noun
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Of or relating to the hypothetical parent language of the Indo-European language family. Also called Proto-Indo-European and abbreviated PIE.
adjective
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Of or relating to the hypothetical group of peoples that spread Indo-European languages.
adjective
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A member of a people that speaks an Indo-European language.
noun
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A major language family which includes many of the native languages of Europe, Western Asia and India, with notable Indic, Iranian and European sub-branches.
pronoun
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A member of the original ethnolinguistic group hypothesized to have spoken Proto-Indo-European and thus to have been the ancestor for most of India and Western Eurasia.
noun
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Origin of indo-european

Coined in 1813 by Sir Thomas Young, from Indo- +‎ European, relating to the geographical extremes in India and Europe (which was valid before the discovery of Tocharian languages in the early 20th century).

Sentence Examples

  • It is now not only the headquarters of the English naval squadron in the Persian Gulf, and the land terminus of the Indo-European telegraph, but it also forms the chief station in the Gulf of the British India Steam Navigation Company, which runs its vessels weekly between Bombay and Basra.

  • The groundwork, so far as it can be ascertained, and the grammar are Indo-European, but a large number of words have been borrowed from the Latin or Italian and Greek, and it is not always easy to decide whether the mutilated and curtailed forms now in use represent adopted words or belong to the original vocabulary.

  • Taking the term Italy to comprise the whole peninsula with the northern region as far as the Alps, we must first distinguish the tribe or tribes which spoke Indo-European languages from those who did not.

  • One has hitherto supposed that he was related to the Mediterraneans, the race to which the Bronze Age Greeks and Italians belonged; but this supposed connexion may well break down in the matter of skull form, as the Hittite skull, like that of the modern Anatolian, probably inclined to be brachycephalic. whereas that of the Mediterranean inclined in the other direction, And now the Bohemian Assyriologist Prof. Hrozny has brought forward evidence s that the cuneiform script adopted by the Hittites from the Mesopotamians expressed an Indo-European tongue, nearly akin to Latin!

  • Still less foundation exists for the belief, once widely spread, that Bactria was the cradle of the Indo-European race; it was based on the supposition that the nations of Europe had immigrated from Asia, and that the Aryan languages (Indian and Iranian) stood nearest to the original language of the Indo-Europeans.

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Words near indo-european in the Dictionary