Indo-European

American  

[in-doh-yoor-uh-pee-uhn] / ˈɪn doʊˌyʊər əˈpi ən /

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.

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adjective

1. of or belonging to Indo-European.

2. speaking an Indo-European language.

   an Indo-European people.

Indo-European British  

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

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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

Etymology

Origin of Indo-European

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

Example Sentences

He notes that the group’s influence across Europe continues to this day in, for example, the Indo-European languages spoken across the continent.

From Scientific American • Mar. 3, 2023

Another 13% speak an Indo-European language other than Spanish.

From Seattle Times • Nov. 12, 2022

This word comes from an immensely old Indo-European word, nomos, which refers to a fixed area, or to pasture.

From New York Times • Oct. 14, 2022

The early people of the Caucasus would have been familiar with farming, he says, but the deepest layers of Indo-European have just one word for grain and no words for legumes or the plow.

From Science Magazine • Aug. 24, 2022

Since there was thus no inherited shared root meaning “gun,” each Indo-European language had to invent or borrow its own word when guns were finally invented.

From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond