Proto-Germanic

American

[proh-toh-jer-man-ik] / ˌproʊ toʊ dʒərˈmæn ɪk /

noun

the unattested prehistoric parent language of the Germanic languages; Germanic.

adjective

of or relating to Proto-Germanic.

Proto-Germanic British

noun

the prehistoric unrecorded language that was the ancestor of all Germanic languages

"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

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

That point in time would mark the origins of English and German as distinct languages, branching off from a common proto-Germanic language.

From Scientific American

In the 1910s, a German named Gustaf Kossinna turned his personal fixation on heightened Proto-Germanic Barbarian activity after the fall of Rome into a theory, “settlement archaeology,” that emphasized the glory of the German nation.

From New York Times

In English, the “-ed” past-tense ending of Proto-Germanic, like a superior life form, drove out the Proto-Indo-European system of indicating tenses by vowel changes.

From New York Times

Macfarlane is delighted to discover that the verb "to learn" links back etymologically to proto-Germanic liznojan, meaning "to follow or to find a track".

From The Guardian

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023