Indo-European

[ in-doh-yoo r-uh-pee-uh n ]

/ ˈɪn doʊˌyʊər əˈpi ən /

noun

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.Compare family(def 14).

Proto-Indo-European(def 1).

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

adjective

of or belonging to Indo-European.

speaking an Indo-European language: an Indo-European people.

QUIZZES

TAKE THIS QUIZ TO SEE WHAT YOU KNOW ABOUT HIGH SCHOOL PUNCTUATION!

Commas mark divisions in sentences. Periods end declarative sentences. Apostrophes show possession. Easy, right? Well, punctuation can get pretty tricky—fast. Think you got what it takes to be a punctuation expert? Take our quiz to prove it!

Question 1 of 10

Which of the options below is the best punctuation for the sentence? It__s your turn to pick the movie __ but your sister gets to pick the board game we _ re going to play.

Its your turn to pick the movie but your sister gets to pick the board game we’re going to play.

It’s your turn to pick the movie but your sister gets to pick the board game were going to play.

It’s your turn to pick the movie, but your sister gets to pick the board game we’re going to play.

TAKE THE QUIZ TO FIND OUT

Origin of Indo-European

First recorded in 1805–15

OTHER WORDS FROM Indo-European

non-In·do-Eu·ro·pe·an, adjective, noun

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2020

Example sentences from the Web for indo-european

And the Latin mātrīx for “womb” comes from the same Indo-European root that gives us the English “mother.”
The Artificial Womb Will Change Feminism Forever|Samantha Allen|August 12, 2014|DAILY BEAST
No other branch of the Indo-European stock has experienced an isolated evolution like this.
A History of Sanskrit Literature|Arthur A. MacDonell
Indo-European is treated as preceding and different from all its descendants, a single uniform speech without dialects.
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 14, Slice 4|Various
Nay, more—it altered the name of the class; which was now called, as it has been since, Indo-European.
Man and His Migrations|R. G. (Robert Gordon) Latham

We start with stems or themes, by which are meant words of two or Forms of Indo-European grammar.
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 12, Slice 3|Various
He sees in this the first stage of the Indo-European movement which was to sweep eastward as far as India.
The New Stone Age in Northern Europe|John M. Tyler

British Dictionary definitions for indo-european

Indo-European

adjective

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

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

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

noun

the Indo-European family of languages

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

a member of the prehistoric people who spoke this language

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

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012