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etymon

 - 2 dictionary results

et⋅y⋅mon

  [et-uh-mon]
Use etymon in a Sentence
–noun, plural -mons, -ma  [-muh] .
the linguistic form from which another form is historically derived, as the Latin cor “heart,” which is the etymon of English cordial, or the Indo-European *(e)rd-, which is the etymon of Latin cor, Greek kardía, Russian serdtse, and English heart.
Origin:
1560–70; < L: the origin of a word < Gk étymon the essential meaning of a word seen in its origin or traced to its grammatical parts (neut. of étymos true, actual, real)
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
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et·y·mon   (ět'ə-mŏn')   
n.   pl. et·y·mons or et·y·ma (-mə)

  1. An earlier form of a word in the same language or in an ancestor language. For example, Indo-European *duwo and Old English twā are etymons of Modern English two.

  2. A word or morpheme from which compounds and derivatives are formed.

  3. A foreign word from which a particular loan word is derived. For example, Latin duo, "two," is an etymon of English duodecimal.


[Latin, from Greek etumon, true sense of a word, from neuter of etumos, true.]
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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