Proto-Indo-European Roots

Proto-Indo-European Roots

*Root/Stem:*	*okw-

*Meanings:*	an eye, to see

*Cognates:*	Greek osse (an eye) - from okwe > ote according to Hellenic phonetic laws
	Latin *oculus* (an eye) - masculine, o-stem noun, > French *oeil, Spanish ojo, Portuguese olho, Romanian ochi, Sardinian okru, oju, Aromanian okli, Italian occhio, Catalan ull, Occitan uei*
	Common Celtic **okw-* (to see), > Old Irish *fuindeoc* (a window) - from wé- (to blow) + okw-, Irish Gaelic *fuinneog* (a window) Common Celtic ehi-kwo- 'sight' > Old Irish enech* 'sight', Middle Welsh & Middle Breton enep
	Hittite *šakuwa* (eyes, dual) - sometimes considered a prefixed noun from this very stem, but very doubtful
	Tocharian A ak (an eye), Tocharian B ek
	Sanskrit *aks.i* (an eye), Gypsy *yak, Lahnda ekh, Nepali akho, Kashmiri achi, Hindi & Gujarati akh, Khaskura ankha, Punjabi ekkh*
	Armenian *akn,* gen. *akan* (an eye)
	Common Germanic augan (an eye), *agwian-* (to see) > Gothic *augo* (an eye), Old English *éage* (an eye, neuter), Old Swedish *óga, Old Frankish age,* Old High German *ouga, auga,* Old Norse *auga; Old Frisian auwa* (to show); English *eye* (an eye), Swedish *oga, Afrikaans & Dutch oog, Frisian each, Faroese eyga, Danish oje, Norwegian oye, Icelandic auga, German Auge*
	Common Baltic akis (an eye), > Old Prussian ackis* (an eye), Lithuanian & Sudovian *akis* (feminine), Latvian *acs*
	Common Slavic oko (an eye, neuter), dual oc'i, oc'esa > Old Church Slavic & Old Russian & Ukrainian & Bulgarian & Czech & Polish & Slovene & Serbo-Croatian & Macedonian & Slovak oko,* Upper Sorbian *woko, Lower Sorbian hoko, Belorussian voka*

Notes:	This stem generated a verb "to see" and a noun "eye", of which the second appeared much more lively. We cannot say if the noun "eye" derived from this stem was masculine, feminine or neuter in Proto-Indo-European. Doubtless is only that it did not have plural but only dual forms. There is an opinion that this word for "eye" was in sacral use and meant "eyes of god". So many languages elaborated another word with the meaning "eye of human", like Greek *ophthalmos* or Slavic *glaz*. This may be a reason due to which this stem disappeared from a lot of IE tongues.