polyglot

The story

1. grc-att · derived fromπολύγλωττος
2. Late Latin · derived frompolyglottus
3. Proto-Indo-European · derived from*glōgʰs“tip of corn”
4. Ancient Greek · derived fromγλῶσσᾰ“tongue; language”
5. grc-att · derived fromγλῶττα
6. Proto-Indo-European · derived from*pleh₁-“to fill”
7. Ancient Greek · derived fromπολῠ́γλωσσος“speaking many languages, multilingual”
8. grc-att · borrowed fromπολύγλωττος“speaking many languages, multilingual”
9. English todaypolyglot

PIE word *glōgʰs Borrowed from Attic Greek πολύγλωττος (polúglōttos, “speaking many languages, multilingual”), alternative form of Ancient Greek πολῠ́γλωσσος (polŭ́glōssos, “speaking many languages, multilingual”), from πολῠ́ς (polŭ́s, “a lot of, many”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *pleh₁- (“to fill”)) + Attic Greek γλῶττα (glôtta), Ancient Greek γλῶσσᾰ (glôssă, “tongue; language”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *glōgʰs (“tip of corn”)) + -ος (-os, suffix forming o-grade action nouns). The English word is analysable as poly- + -glot. Noun sense 1 (“publication in several languages”) is probably derived from Late Latin polyglottus, from Attic Greek πολύγλωττος (polúglōttos): see above.

Words from the same roots