Word.ws English Dictionary

Indo-Semitic

Indo-Semitic adjective: of or relating to both the Indo-European and the Semitic languages, or to a proposed ancestor of both.

Adjective

Indo-Semitic (not comparable)

  1. Of or relating to both the Indo-European and the Semitic languages, or to a proposed ancestor of both.
    • Such stretched out forms were to become important for the Indo-Semitic hypothesis, and in 1911 Möller writes […]1969, Raimo Anttila, Proto-Indo-European Schwebeablaut, University of California Press, page 18
    • Western scholars consistent intent to exclude, without any evidence, the Ethiopic language as one of the possible original languages of the book [the Book of Enoch], perhaps, suggests that the Ethiopic language is not part of the Indo-Semitic languages.1997, Ayele Bekerie, Ethiopic, an African Writing System: Its History and Principles, The Red Sea Press, →ISBN, page 116
  2. Of or relating to India and Semitic peoples; for example, of or relating to Semitic (or supposedly Semitic) peoples of India.
    • He proceeds, after mentioning that the Indo-Semitic, or Tuda, have massive heads, large eyes, and receding foreheads: […]1870, James Bonwick, Daily Life and Origin of the Tasmanians, S. Low, Son, & Marston, page 244

Origin of Indo-Semitic

From Indo- + Semitic.

Questions about Indo-Semitic

What does Indo-Semitic mean?
Indo-Semitic means of or relating to both the Indo-European and the Semitic languages, or to a proposed ancestor of both.
What part of speech is Indo-Semitic?
Indo-Semitic is an adjective.

Words near Indo-Semitic in the dictionary

  1. Indo-Pacific tarpon
  2. Indo-Pacific tarpons
  3. Indo-Pak
  4. Indo-Portuguese
  5. Indo-Russian
  6. Indo-Semitic
  7. Indo-Uralic
  8. indoaniline
  9. indoanilines
  10. Indoaryan
  11. Indoasia

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Indo-Semitic (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: “Indo-Semitic.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/indo-semitic. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.