Word.ws English Dictionary

eteo-

UK/ˈiti.əʊ/US/ˈiti.oʊ/

eteo- prefix: denoting an ancient or ancestral language (or form of a language), dating from a time before it came into contact with another language; particularly one which had considerable influence, or which later displaced it entirely.

Prefix

eteo-

  1. Denoting an ancient or ancestral language (or form of a language), dating from a time before it came into contact with another language; particularly one which had considerable influence, or which later displaced it entirely.
    • Eteo-Tocharian is a good example of the influence of Greeks in Central Asia. Eteo-Tocharian was written in a modified Greek alphabet (Maricq 1958:398). This script is a manifestation of the Greek influence in Bactria, even after the Kushana subjugation of this area.2010, Clyde Winters, “Greek Influence on Sanskrit Language”, in Journal of Eurasian Studies, volume 2, number 3, archived from the original on 17 Feb 2024
    • Bái vocabulary, later Chinese borrowings excluded, can be divided into a Sino-Bái vocabulary, which shows a close resemblance to Chinese, and a Pre-Bái or Eteo-Bái vocabulary, which is not etymologizable into Chinese.2015, Xun Gong, “How Old is the Chinese in Bái?”, in Recent Advances in Old Chinese Historical Phonology Workshop, archived from the original on 05 Mar 2021

Origin of eteo-

Learned borrowing from Ancient Greek ἐτεός (eteós, “true, original”), by analogy with Eteocretan, from Ἐτεόκρητες (Eteókrētes, literally “original Cretan”).

Questions about eteo-

What does eteo- mean?
Eteo- means denoting an ancient or ancestral language (or form of a language), dating from a time before it came into contact with another language; particularly one which had considerable influence, or which later displaced it entirely.
What part of speech is eteo-?
Eteo- is a prefix.
How do you pronounce eteo-?
Eteo- is pronounced /ˈiti.əʊ/ (UK).

Words near eteo- in the dictionary

  1. etebenecid
  2. etegami
  3. etem
  4. Etemenanki
  5. etendue
  6. eteo-
  7. Eteoclus
  8. Eteocretan
  9. Eteocypriot
  10. eteostic
  11. eteostics

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: eteo- (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “eteo-.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/eteo-. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.