The American Heritage Dictionary Of Indo-European Roots, Third Edition

Utterly fascinating glimpses into early Indo-European culture, as well as surprising connections among modern words. I think I have bought seven copies of the various editions over the years, as people get engrossed in it and take it with them.

I love this book. The introduction goes through some basic concepts re into-european languages as well as "ur" into-european. It was not hard to read for a laymen. (I am interested and speak several languages, tho I have no linguistics training).The entries are in alphabetical order of the guessed original IE language vocab, w/ an alphabetical index of related English words in the back that tells you the entry of the original IE word the English comes from.Each entry has examples of several English words that the old IE word gave birth to. There are occasional examples of words from other languages besides English that the word gave birth to. My only complaint is that the non-English words could be more frequent. (Example- The same IE word gave us grave and grieve, and gave sanskrit "guru" the teacher, all words coming from an IE word supposed to mean "heavy".) While I recognize including various words from all current IE languages in each entry would be unrealistic and unwieldy, there could have been a little more.Often but not always they will trace how a word changed meaning historically in English, from IE to older English words to our modern senses. This is brief, and not so frequent of a feature. Interspersed thruout the dictionary are brief "essays" or just entries about guessed IE culture, inferred from the word history studies. Really fascinatingOVERALLThis is a lot of fun, and you don't need specialized linguistics knowledge to enjoy it. I speak other languages, but even if you only speak English and are interested in words and word histories you are bound to love this book. Don't hesitate, just get it. I have the OED shorter, the Chambers Etymological dictionary, and the Origins etymological dictionary, and this really complements them all and adds depth to your understanding of word histories and changes.

I do study weird language dictionaries. This dictionary of Indo-European word roots is great, a must have for anyone interested in etymological musing.

This compendium of roots contains many not listed in "The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language" proper, with Germanic-, Greek-, and Italic-only roots included in addition. The only thing that would make it perfect would be to include even more roots—Wiktionary lists roots on its site that aren't found in this book, though such roots are sometimes sourceless and spurious—but give it time. Maybe the fourth edition will build on what is already a solid framework.

Despite its very short form, this is a well writen dictionary which is simultaneously a scholarly and handy. Even the simple introduction is quite precise. It is very hard to please both the academic elite and the general reader, yet Watkins has done it like a great artist. A simple example: the author has tried to simplify the symbols for the general reader (such as using schwa instead of the conventional indexed h denoting PIE laryngeals) but still there is no deviation from standards, and no vulgarization whatsoever. In short, it is an easy reference book.The only shortcoming is its misleading title, (which should be rather read as "IE Roots Reflected in English"), yet surely it has chosen by the publisher after creating this booklet out of an appendix written by Professor Watkins for the unabridged English dictionary. One positive aspect of the book is its constant reference to Julius Pokorny's "Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch" on each PIE entry which allow a deeper and more expanded study of IE cognates.

It is a scholarly book (it is hard to read as a novel) but if the reader is a fully bilingual with two PIE languages it is fun indeed. PIE roots changes are not intuitive. This book is a summary of 250 years of comparative linguistics starting from William Jones.

Excellent reference book, it really is all you expect of The American Heritage. The book has the most up-to-date information on Indo-European roots and also brief comments about particularly interesting entries that all Indo-Europeanists will enjoy!

This is an excellent resource for word lovers, etymologists, historical linguists, and Indo-European linguists. It was written by the pre-eminent expert in Indo-European linguistics.

不思議な辞書である。箇々の英単語の説明が少ない。言葉の変遷とグルーピングの説明が主である。例えば、drizzleはdhreuから派生しており、to fall, dropの意味であり、dreary, droopなどが仲間である。1万語以上の語彙力突破の強力な助っ人である。「語源でたどる英単語まんだら」はこの本の解説書みたいに思えるので、一緒に読むとよくわかる。

J'ajoute au commentaire d'A. Rivière que c'est aussi un livre essentiel pour les indo-européanistes, car Watkins trace la longue histoire des mots jusqu'à leur prototype, qu'il reconstruit sous forme traditionnelle (avec des voyelles longues en omettant les laryngales qui ne sont pas indispensables ici).C'est aussi un livre indispensable pour les romanistes : sachant que plus de la moitié du vocabulaire anglais est constitué de mots d'origine française ou latine, on pourra avoir la longue histoire d'un mot français en cherchant dans ce dictionnaire à l'emprunt que l'anglais a fait (par exemple 'belfry' < vieux-français 'berfrei' > français 'beffroi' < germanique 'berg-frij-' < indo-européen 'bhergh- + prî-)Les dictionnaires étymologiques du français dont en général écrits par des littéraires sans formation en linguistique comparée pour lesquels le fin du fin se résume à citer le premier texte où le mot est attesté (voir par exemple le catastrophique 'Dictionnaire historique du français' d'Alain Rey) et le petit volume de Watkins y suppléera avec profit.

Diese neue (und zugleich letzte) Ausgabe des indogermanischen Wörterbuchs von Watkins ist für alle, die sich für den lautlichen und semantischen Wandel des geerbten Wortschatzes über eine Zeitspanne von etwa fünftausend Jahren (!) interessieren, unentbehrlich. Der kürzlich verstorbene Watkins war ein Indogermanist des ersten Rangs, der leicht verständlich und spannend vermitteln konnte, was in den Händen eines anderen eher wie ein Buch mit sieben Siegeln gewirkt hätte. Nach wie vor bleiben aber kleine Ungereimtheiten -- gelegentlich veraltete bzw. schwer nachvollziehbare Etymologien sowie die völlig unnötige Vermeidung der Darstellung der sogenannten Laryngallaute durch die längst universal anerkannten Symbole h1, h2, und h3. Letztere werden zwar oft und umständlich mit angegeben (angeblich als frühere Stufe der Entwicklung), aber was in der ersten Ausgabe aus typographischen Gründen entschuldigt werden konnte, kann heute nicht mehr gerechtfertigt werden.Dieses Buch kann ich allen empfehlen, die sich für Sprachgeschichte begeistern.

Fascinating to browse and with very clear print (important because the text in the dictionary part is pretty small). I love seeing the connections betwen words in the languages I'm interested in (Greek, German, Norse). Some little frustrations when things seem to be missing - for example, the introducion tantalisingly says: "The Germanic word for 'woman' (WIFE) was completely isolated until a cognate was recently identified in Tocharian. For its curious semantic history, see 'ghwibh-'." This piqued my curiosity but I tried in vain to find ghwibh- in the dictionary itself, there was nothing between ghwer- and gladh-. Of course you can find the details on the web, but then why pay thirteen quid for a book? Overall though, for quality of content and printing, it is excellent value.

同語根の単語を調べるのに重宝する。