Meillet's law

Meaning

Proper Noun

• A Common Slavic accent law, according to which Slavic words have a circumflex on the root vowel (i.e. the first syllable) if that word had a mobile accent paradigm in Proto-Slavic and Proto-Balto-Slavic, regardless of whether the root had the Balto-Slavic acute register.

Origin

• Named after the French Indo-Europeanist Antoine Meillet, who discovered it.