Indo-European

[ in-doh-yoor-uh-pee-uhn ]

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 Compare family ( def 16 ).
2. Proto-Indo-European ( def 1 ).
3. a member of any of the peoples speaking an Indo-European language.

adjective

1. of or belonging to Indo-European.
2. speaking an Indo-European language:

   an Indo-European people.

Indo-European

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

noun

1. the Indo-European family of languages
2. Also calledprimitive Indo-EuropeanProto-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 Words From

• non-Indo-Euro·pean adjective noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of Indo-European¹

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

Example Sentences

The steppe people transformed the continent over the course of 5 centuries, introducing the wheel and Indo-European languages.

From Science Magazine

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

They numbered some 400,000, spoke a language of the Austroasiatic family—unlike India’s mainstream Indo-European and Dravidian languages—and lay largely outside the Hindu world.

From Scientific American

These migrations may also have brought Indo-European languages to the region.

From Scientific American

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

From New York Times