Proto-Indo-European Roots

Root/Stem:	*p@tér-
Meanings:	a father
Cognates:
Hellenic	Greek patér (a father),  New Greek pater, pateras
Italic	Latin pater (a father), Oscan patír, Umbrian patre abl.sg., Marrucinian patres gen.sg.;  Italian padre, Spanish padre, French pere, Occitan paire, Catalan pare, Portuguese pai
Celtic	Common Celtic *atér, >  Gaulish Ateronius (a personal name), Irish athair (father), Scottish athair, Old Irish ater, Welsh gwal-adr, Breton ual-art
Indic	Sanskrit pitá, pitar- (a father) Punjabi pyo, Hindi & Gujarati pita
Iranian	Avestan pitá- (a father)  Pashto plar, Lahnda pyu, Baluchi phith, pith, Ossetic fyd, Tadjik padar, Persian pedar
	Armenian hair (a father), gen. haur
Tocharian	Tocharian pácar (father)
Germanic	Common Germanic *fadir, *fadhó, >  Old High German fater, Old Icelandic fadhir, Old English faeder German Vater, Swedish far, fader, Frisian faer, Faroese fadir, Danish fader, Norwegian far, Icelandic faoir, Dutch & Afrikaans vader
Baltic	Lithuanian patinas (a male animal), Old Prussian Seme-patis (a deity; "father of earth"?, as zeme means 'ground, earth')
Notes:	This word is also a representative of the r-stems nouns, which denoted kinship in the Proto-Indo-European language. Comparing with the previous Word-A-Week, this one was not preserved in too many languages. For example, no traces are found in Baltic and Slavic tongues, though their close relative Germanic has it. This can be explained by religious reasons: *p@te'r was one of the names of the supreme IE deity (cf. Indic dyauh pitar, Italic Juppiter, Greek Zeus patér), so Balto-Slavic people could put a taboo on pronouncing the word, choosing another one for the meaning 'father'. In Slavic it is *otits', in Baltic *te.vas. The root vowel here is the so-called Indo-European 'schwa', which is proved by the Indo-Iranian -i- reflection.