belonging to or consisting of those branches of the Indo-European family of languages that show distinctive preservation of the Proto-Indo-European labiovelars and that show a historical development of velar articulations, as the sounds (k) or [kh] /x/ (Show IPA) from Proto-Indo-European palatal phonemes. The centum branches are Germanic, Celtic, Italic, Hellenic, Anatolian, and Tocharian.
denoting or belonging to the Indo-European languages in which original velar stops (k) were not palatalized, namely languages of the Hellenic, Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Anatolian, and Tocharian branches Compare satem
Word Origin
Latin: hundred, chosen because the c represents the Indo-European k
