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| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. |
Appendix I Indo-European Roots |
| ENTRY: | gwei- |
| DEFINITION: | To live. Also gwei - (oldest form *gwei3-, with metathesized variant *gwye3-, colored to *gwyo3-, contracted to *gwy -).Derivatives include quick, vivid, vitamin, whiskey, amphibious, microbe, and hygiene. I. Suffixed zero-grade form *gwi-wo-, *gw  -wo- (< *gwi-wo-), living. 1a. quick, quicksilver, from Old English cwic, cwicu, living, alive; b. couch grass, quitch grass, from Old English cwice, couch grass (so named from its rapid growth). Both a and b from Germanic *kwi(k)waz. 2a. (i) vivify, viviparous, from Latin vvus, living, alive; (ii) viper, weever, wyvern, from Latin vpera, viper, contracted from *vvipera, “bearing live young” (from the belief that it hatches its eggs inside its body), from feminine of earlier *vvo-paros (-paros, bearing; see per-1); b. viand, victual, viva, vivacious, vivid; convivial, revive, survive, from Latin denominative vvere, to live. 3. azoth, from Middle Persian *zhwak, alive, from Old Persian *jvaka-, extension of jva-. 4. Further suffixed form *gw-wo-t -. viable, vital; vitamin, from Latin vta, life. 5. Further suffixed form *gwi-wo-t t-. usquebaugh, whiskey, from Old Irish bethu, life.II. Suffixed zero-grade form *gwi -o-. bio-, biota, biotic; aerobe, amphibian, anabiosis, cenobite, dendrobium, microbe, rhizobium, saprobe, symbiosis, from Greek bios, life (> biot , way of life).III. Variant form *gwy - (< *gwyo-). 1. azo-; diazo, hylozoism, from Greek zo, life. 2. Suffixed form *gwy-yo-. zodiac, –zoic, zoo-, zoon1, –zoon, from Greek zon, zion, living being, animal.IV. Compound suffixed form *yu-gwi -es- (see aiw-).V. Possibly Old English cwifer-, nimble: quiver1. (Pokorny 3. g  e - 467.) |
| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. | |
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