Proto-Indo-European Roots
| Root/Stem: | *ost-, *kost- |
| Meanings: | a bone, a rib |
| Cognates (): | |
| Hellenic | Greek osteon, Attic ostón 'bone' |
| Italic | Latin os, gen. ossis 'bone', Old
Latin ossum, nom. pl. ossua Latin costa 'a rib' |
| Celtic | Welsh asgwrn 'bones', Cornish ascorn, Breton ascourn |
| Indic | Sanskrit asthi- 'a bone', gen. asthnas |
| Dardic & Nuristani | |
| Iranian | Avestan ast, asti- 'bone' |
| Anatolian | Hittite haštai-, hesta- 'bones' |
| Tocharian | Tocharian B ásta 'bones' |
| Armenian | Armenian oskr 'bone' |
| Balkan | Albanian ašt, ašte 'bones' |
| Germanic | |
| Baltic | |
| Slavic | Common Slavic *osti, *kosti 'bone' > Russian kost' 'bone', ostov 'skeleton' |
| Notes: | The two variants of the root with the same meaning are very
interesting, especially in Italic and Slavic where they are used parallelly. The newest
research makes some linguists (Gamkrelidze & Ivanov) think that this dualism is a
result of some palatal phoneme in initial position. The idea that there was a laryngeal instead of *k- originally was supported by the Hittite forms, but today the majority of specialists do not maintain it. |