noun. An earlier form of a word in the same language or in an ancestor language. For example, Indo-European *duwo and Old English twā are etymons of Modern English two.

noun. A word or morpheme from which compounds and derivatives are formed.

noun. A foreign word from which a particular loan word is derived. For example, Latin duo, “two,” is an etymon of English duodecimal.

noun. The original element of a word; the root or primitive.

noun. The original or fundamental sense; the primary or root meaning.

noun. An original form; primitive word; root.

noun. Original or fundamental signification.

noun. A source word of a given word.

noun. a simple form inferred as the common basis from which related words in several languages can be derived by linguistic processes

"But then, instead of calling the etymon "Hindi-Urdu cakor" or "Hindustani cakor," they invented a completely spurious distinction between what look to the untutored eye like two different preforms, apparently because their transcription system for Hindi uses c for the unaspirated \ch\ (presumably using ch for the aspirated consonant), whereas the one for Urdu uses ch for the same phoneme (and presumably chh for the aspirated one)."

cognate  root  

etymologist  etymologize  etymology  

descriptor  form  signifier  word form  

acct  axite  besiege  cornsilk  critick  

root  

etyma