✣ Word Garden

Proto-Indo-European · 5 October 2026

A word a day week

*méh₂tēr

approximately ‘meh₂-tēr’ · reconstructed kin term

  • mother

Mother, māter, mḗtēr, and mātṛ make one of the most recognisable kinship sets in the Indo-European family.

Then → now

The family reunion

*méh₂tēr → Proto-Germanic *mōdēr → Old English mōdor → English mother; *méh₂tēr → Latin māter → Latin māternus → English maternal; *méh₂tēr → Ancient Greek mḗtēr → Greek mētrópolis → English metropolis; *méh₂tēr → Sanskrit mātṛ
Selected routes, not an exhaustive family tree. Intermediate forms are simplified for a readable first look.
  • GermanicEnglish mothermother
  • ItalicEnglish maternalof a mother
  • GreekEnglish metropolismother-city
  • Indo-AryanSanskrit mātṛmother

Tiny sentence

*méh₂tēr bʰéreti.

mother.NOM carry.PRS.3SG

“The mother carries.”

A teaching reconstruction combining two familiar lexical items. It illustrates morphology without claiming a recoverable original utterance.

Receipts

Sources and cautions

Kin terms are old and morphologically irregular. The nominative display form is only one member of a reconstructed paradigm.