The Collaborative International Dictionary
Indo-European \In`do-Eu`ro*pe"an\, a. Aryan; -- applied to the languages of India and Europe which are derived from the prehistoric Aryan language; also, pertaining to the people or nations who speak these languages; as, the Indo-European or Aryan family.
The common origin of the Indo-European nations.
--Tylor.
Indo-European \In`do-Eu`ro*pe"an\ A member of one of the Caucasian races of Europe or India speaking an Indo-European language.
Professor Otto Schrader . . . considers that the oldest
probable domicile of the Indo-Europeans is to be sought
for on the common borderland of Asia and of Europe, --
in the steppe country of southern Russia.
--Census of
India, 1901.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1814, coined by physician, physicist and Egyptologist Thomas Young (1773-1829) and first used in an article in the "Quarterly Review," from Indo-, comb. form of Greek Indos "India" + European. "Common to India and Europe," specifically in reference to the group of related languages and to the race or races characterized by their use. The alternative Indo-Germanic (1835) was coined in German 1823 (indogermanisch), based on the two peoples at the extremes of the geographic area covered by the languages, before Celtic was realized also to be an Indo-European language. After this was proved, many German scholars switched to Indo-European as more accurate, but Indo-Germanic continued in use (popularized by the titles of major works) and the predominance of German scholarship in this field made it the popular term in England, too, through the 19c. See also Aryan.
Wikipedia
Indo-European most commonly refers to the Indo-European languages originating in Eurasia.
Indo-European may also refer to various topics related to that family of languages:
- Indo-European migrations
- Indo-European studies, an academic field involving linguistics, anthropology, history, archaeology etc. dealing with the IE language family
- Proto-Indo-European language (abbr. PIE), the reconstructed common ancestor of all Indo-European languages
- Proto-Indo-Europeans, a hypothetical ancient ethnic group speaking the PIE language
- Proto-Indo-European religion, the hypothetical religion of the Proto-Indo-Europeans
- Proto-Indo-European society, the hypothetical society of the Proto-Indo-Europeans
In a different domain, the phrase Indo-European is also used as a synonym of:
- Indo people, people of Dutch East Indies (proto Indonesian) and European descent traditionally named "Indo-Europeans"
Usage examples of "indo-european".
Christianity, or of Western civilization, or of Indo-European folkways, or of Anglo-American culture.
Specialist, East Indo-European Protohistory, and in many ways a more important man than Everard.
Chinese script, and a single headstone written in the rarely-found Tocharian language, an Indo-European tongue known to have once been spoken in what is now Western China.
He told them how all of the gods, along with everything else, survived in Virtu, and in this time of a turning back to religion it was appropriate that the earliest divine manifestations in Indo-European consciousness should be the focus of worship now, dwelling as they did in the deepest layers of the human psyche where description might still function.
This is entirely inexplicable upon any theory of an Eastern origin of the Indo-European races, but very easily understood if we recognize the Aryan and Celtic migrations as going out about the same time from the Atlantean fountain-head.
The native peoples belonged to an Indo-European race called Illyrians, were tribalized, and detested first Greek and then Roman coastal incursions.
That is not to say that all words in modern Indo-European languages are descended from PIE: most are not, because there have been so many new inventions or borrowings (like the root 'sheep' replacing the old PIE root owis in English).
Non-commutative algebras (where A times B does not equal B times A) are as self-consistent and meaningful for speakers of Indo-European languages as for speakers of Finno-Ugric.
Later the Bell Beaker culture seems to have originated in Iberia -- Spain -- and spread north and east, in due course overlapping the corded pottery culture shown in the prior volume: the Indo-Europeans coming west.
The ancient Indo-Europeans, our ancestors, used that same base twelve system for many thousands of years, and used it for their own systems of measurements, until some dull person started to count on his fingers and invented the decimal system in the process.
Quite a few of those families occupy large contiguous areas—in the case of Indo-European, the area encompassing most of Europe east through much of western Asia to India.
Quite a few of those families occupy large contiguous areas--in the case of Indo-European, the area encompassing most of Europe east through much of western Asia to India.
Among major expansions of the last millennium are those that carried Indo-European languages from Europe to the Americas and Australia, the Russian language from eastern Europe across Siberia, and Turkish (a language of the Altaic family) from Central Asia westward to Turkey.
The Gandharvas, the familiar spirits of the Indo-Europeans, belong to folklore.
Humans obstinately refused to change their lingua franca for the sake of the Library, (though both Skins and Shirts began studying Indo-European for fun—each for their own reasons) and instead sent their brightest mels and fems to help the helpful aliens adjust.