Indo-European

Meanings

Proper Noun

• A major language family which includes many of the native languages of Europe, Western Asia and India, with notable Indic, Iranian and European sub-branches.
• Proto-Indo-European: the hypothetical parent language of the Indo-European language family.

Noun

• A member of the original ethnolinguistic group hypothesized to have spoken Proto-Indo-European and thus to have been the ancestor for most of India and Western Eurasia.

Adjective

• Of or relating to the languages originally spoken in Europe and Western Asia.
• Of or relating to the hypothetical parent language of the Indo-European language family. Also called Proto-Indo-European and abbreviated PIE.
• Of or relating to the hypothetical group of peoples that spread Indo-European languages.

Related

Similar words

• Indo-Germanic

Origin

• , from Indo- + European, relating to the geographical extremes in India and Europe (which was valid before the discovery of Tocharian languages in the early 20th century).