Indo-European

[in-doh-yoor-uh-pee-uhn]

noun

1. a large, widespread family of languages, the surviving branches of which include Italic, Slavic, Baltic, Hellenic, Celtic, Germanic, and Indo-Iranian, spoken by about half the world's population: English, Spanish, German, Latin, Greek, Russian, Albanian, Lithuanian, Armenian, Persian, Hindi, and Hittite are all Indo-European languages. IE

2. Proto-Indo-European.

3. a member of any of the peoples speaking an Indo-European language.

adjective

1. of or belonging to Indo-European.

2. speaking an Indo-European language.

   an Indo-European people.

Indo-European

adjective

1. denoting, belonging to, or relating to a family of languages that includes English and many other culturally and politically important languages of the world: a characteristic feature, esp of the older languages such as Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit, is inflection showing gender, number, and case

2. denoting or relating to the hypothetical parent language of this family, primitive Indo-European

3. denoting, belonging to, or relating to any of the peoples speaking these languages

noun

1. the Indo-European family of languages

2. Also called: primitive Indo-European.  Proto-Indo-European. the reconstructed hypothetical parent language of this family

3. a member of the prehistoric people who spoke this language

4. a descendant of this people or a native speaker of an Indo-European language

Other Word Forms

• non-Indo-European adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of Indo-European¹

First recorded in 1805–15; Indo- ( def. ) + European ( def. )