Etymology

yew

Y4E1W4

Today it means: A species of coniferous tree, Taxus baccata, with dark-green flat needle-like leaves and seeds bearing red arils, native to western, central and southern Europe, northwest Africa, northern Iran and southwest Asia. Full definition →

Middle English ew ← Old English īw ← Proto-West Germanic *īhu
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The story

  1. Proto-Indo-European · inherited from*h₁eyHw-
  2. Proto-Germanic · inherited from*īhwaz
  3. Proto-West Germanic · inherited from*īhu
  4. Old English · inherited fromīw
  5. Middle English · inherited fromew
  6. English todayyew

From Middle English ew, from Old English īw, ēow, [both cognates of Welsh yw (“yews”), Irish eo, Old Irish eó respectively]; although the Old English form was conjectured to be from Proto-West Germanic *īhu, from Proto-Germanic *īhwaz (compare Icelandic ýr), masculine variant of *īwō (compare Dutch ijf, German Eibe), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁eyHw-. See also Hittite 𒄑𒂊𒅀𒀭 (eyan, “type of evergreen”), Latgalian īva (“bird cherry”), Lithuanian ievà (“bird cherry”), Russian и́ва (íva, “willow”). Compare typologically Ancient Greek τόξον (tóxon), possibly a cognate of Latin taxus.

Words from the same roots

Old Englishīw all →

Eubank

Proto-Germanic*īhwaz all →

Ivo

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.