teks- The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.

The American Heritage^® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.

Appendix I

Indo-European Roots

ENTRY:	teks-
DEFINITION:	To weave; also to fabricate, especially with an ax; also to make wicker or wattle fabric for (mud-covered) house walls. Oldest form tes-, becoming teks- in centum languages. Derivatives include text, tissue, subtle, architect, and technology. 1. text, tissue; context, pretext, from Latin texere, to weave, fabricate. 2. Suffixed form teks-l-. a. tiller², toil², from Latin tla,* web, net, warp of a fabric, also weaver's beam (to which the warp threads are tied); b. subtle, from Latin subtlis, thin, fine, precise, subtle (< sub-tla, “thread passing under the warp,” the finest thread; sub,* under; see upo). 3. Suffixed form teks-n-, weaver, maker of wattle for house walls, builder (possibly contaminated with teks-tr, builder). tectonic; architect, from Greek tektn, carpenter, builder. 4. Suffixed form teks-n-, craft (of weaving or fabricating). technical, polytechnic, technology, from Greek tekhn,* art, craft, skill. 5a. dachshund, from Old High German dahs, badger; b. dassie, from Middle Dutch das, badger. Both a and b from Germanic thahsuz, badger, possibly from this root (“the animal that builds,” referring to its burrowing skill) but more likely borrowed from the same pre-Indo-European source as the Celtic totemic name Tazgo- (as in Gaulish Tazgo-, Gaelic Tadhg), originally “badger.” (Pokorny te- 1058.)


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.