Indo-Europeans

Noun

Indo-European (plural Indo-Europeans)

1. A member of the original ethnolinguistic group hypothesized to have spoken Proto-Indo-European and thus to have been the ancestor for most of India and Western Eurasia.
   • Two theories of the origins of the Indo-Europeans currently compete. M. Gimbutas believes that early Indo-Europeans entered southeastern Europe from the Pontic Steppes starting ca. 4500 B.C. and spread from there. C. Renfrew equates early Indo-Europeans with early farmers who entered southeastern...1992, R.R. Sokal, N.L. Oden, B.A. Thomson, “Origins of the Indo-Europeans: genetic evidence”, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, volume 89, →DOI, →PMID

   Synonyms:

   Proto-Indo-European

2. A speaker of any Indo-European language (though especially an ancient one), or a member of an Indo-European culture, who is regarded as a continuation of the Proto-Indo-Europeans in terms of language, ancestry, or cultural affinity.
   • To the same direction points a recent revelation made by Professor Henning who identifies the Gutians or Kutians and Tukres of the ancient Near East that occur in the cuneiform inscriptions of the end of the 3rd millennium B.C. with historical Kuchi-Tocharians, this being the earliest appearance of...1988, Thomas V. Gamkrelidze, “On the problem of an Asiatic original homeland of the Proto-Indo-Europeans”, in T.L. Markey and John A.C. Greppin, editors, When Worlds Collide: The Indo-Europeans and...
3. (rare) A European living in India or the Indies.
   • The sale of looted items persisted for a month, and quick profits were made by burghers and Indo-Europeans.2020, Sujit Sivasandaram, Waves Across the South, William Collins, published 2021, page 236
4. (broadly, uncommon) A person of mixed European and Indian or Indonesian ancestry.

See all 10 meanings of Indo-European