Etymological Dictionary of Latin: And the Other Italic Languages - Paperback

by Michiel de Vaan (Author)

A new etymological dictionary of the entire Latin lexicon of Indo-European origin, and of the inherited stock of the other ancient Italic languages, such as Oscan, Umbrian and South Picene.

Back Jacket

Latin is one of the major ancient Indo-European languages and one of the cornerstones of Indo-European studies. Since the last comprehensive etymological dictionary of Latin appeared in 1959, enormous progress has been made in the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European, and many etymologies have been revised. This new etymological dictionary covers the entire Latin lexicon of Indo-European origin. It consists of nearly 1900 entries, which altogether discuss about 8000 Latin lemmata. All words attested before Cicero are included, together with their first date of attestation in Latin. The dictionary also includes all the inherited words found in the other ancient Italic languages, such as Oscan, Umbrian and South Picene; thus, it also serves as an etymological dictionary of Italic.

Author Biography

Michiel de Vaan (Ph.D. 2002) teaches comparative Indo-European linguistics, historical linguistics and dialectology at Leiden University. He has published extensively on Germanic, Albanian, and Indo-Iranian linguistics and philology, including The Avestan Vowels (2003) and Germanic Tone Accents (ed. 2006).