| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. |
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Appendix I
Indo-European Roots |
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| ENTRY: | melg- |
| DEFINITION: | To rub off; also to milk. Oldest form *mel -, becoming *melg- in centum languages.
I. 1. Zero-grade form *m g-. emulsion, from Latin mulg re, to milk. 2. Full-grade form *melg-. a. milk, from Old English meolc, milc; b. milch, from Old English -milce, milch, from Germanic suffixed form *meluk-ja-, giving milk; c. milchig, from Old High German miluh, milk. a–c all from Germanic *melkan, to milk, contaminated with an unrelated noun for milk, cognate with the Greek and Latin forms given in II below, to form the blend *meluk-.
II. Included here to mark the unexplained fact that no common Indo-European noun for milk can be reconstructed is another root *g(a)lag-, *g(a)lakt-, milk, found only in: a. galactic, galacto-, galaxy; agalactia, polygala, from Greek gala (stem galakt-), milk; b. lactate, lacteal, lactescent, lacto-, latte, lettuce, from Latin lac, milk; c. the blended Germanic form cited in I. 2. above. (Pokorny m l- 722, glag- 400.) |
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| 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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