Not being a linguist by profession, understanding only one language and that very poorly, this Glossary has evolved gradually since 1990 from a wide variety of sources.

The primary sources are the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, the Oxford English Dictionary on CD-ROM, Apple Mac’s online version of the Oxford Dictionary of English, The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Chambers Dictionary of Etymology, edited by Robert K. Barnhart, Bloomsbury’s Dictionary of Word Origins, Eric Partridge’s Origins: An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, and recently Douglas Harper’s splendid Online Etymological Dictionary, which is also influenced by Ernest Klein’s Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language and Ernest Weekley’s An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English.

To go back to the original Indo-European languages, I mainly use Cassell’s Latin Dictionary, the Pocket Oxford Classical Greek Dictionary, Shambhala’s The Encyclopedia of Eastern Philosophy and Religion, and M. Monier-Williams’ A Sanskrit-English Dictionary. And to go further back to the supposed PIE language itself, I use Indo-European Language and Culture by Benjamin W. Fortson IV and The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots, revised and edited by Calvert Watkins, in both electronic and printed form.

In turn, this is based on Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (Indo-European Etymological Dictionary) published in 1959 by Julius Pokorny. This is still today the most comprehensive source on the subject, although not fully up to date with the latest scholarly researches. For instance, in November 2022, I discovered the latest research in the Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series, of which Michiel de Vaan’s Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the Other Italic Languages and Etymological Dictionary of Greek by Robert Beekes are prime examples.

The PIE roots of Sanskrit and European languages are especially interesting for they denote roots that are common ancestors of many words that may appear to be morphologically different, rather like the evolution of the species.

To denote these common ancestors, the terms in this Glossary include references to the most important PIE roots, as simplified by Watkins, where they are known and exist.

It is important to note that this Glossary is not intended as a work of scholarship. For myself, I regard philology to mean ‘love of logos’, in both its mundane meaning, as ‘love of words’, and its mystical meaning, as ‘love of the creative power of Life’. In this way, this philological project helps me to develop a rational picture in consciousness of human cognitive evolution, illustrating all evolutionary processes in general, which culminate in Ineffable Wholeness, exquisitely transcending all categories of language, as illustrated by the meaning triangle.