Word.ws English Dictionary

schwebeablaut

schwebeablaut noun: the phenomenon or process of metathesis in a Proto-Indo-European root between the vowel and a neighbouring sonorant, which led to both possible full-grades existing, e.g. *grebʰ- and *gerbʰ-.

Noun (1)

schwebeablaut (uncountable)

  1. (Indo-European-studies) The phenomenon or process of metathesis in a Proto-Indo-European root between the vowel and a neighbouring sonorant, which led to both possible full-grades existing, e.g. *grebʰ- and *gerbʰ-.

Verb

schwebeablaut (third-person singular simple present schwebeablauts, present participle schwebeablauting, simple past and past participle schwebeablauted)

  1. (Indo-European-studies) To undergo the above process.
    • The number given with the root tells the number of subgroups where it schwebeablauts, and the number after the subgroup name indicates the amount of roots/words that schwebeablaut in some other subgroup as well […]1969, University of California Publications in Linguistics
    • But, in any event, Beekes' reconstruction seems less than ideal, given that it effectively relies on a schwebeablauting root[.]2013, Sievers' Law and the History of Semivowel Syllabicity, →ISBN, page 287

Noun (2) capitalized: Schwebeablaut

Schwebeablaut (uncountable)

  1. Alternative letter-case form of schwebeablaut.

Forms of schwebeablaut

Noun
alternative formSchwebeablaut
Verb
third-person singular presentschwebeablauts
present participleschwebeablauting
past participleschwebeablauted
pastschwebeablauted

Origin of schwebeablaut

Borrowed from German Schwebeablaut (“floating ablaut”), from schweben (“float, hover”).

Questions about schwebeablaut

What does schwebeablaut mean?
Schwebeablaut means the phenomenon or process of metathesis in a Proto-Indo-European root between the vowel and a neighbouring sonorant, which led to both possible full-grades existing, e.g. *grebʰ- and *gerbʰ-.
What part of speech is schwebeablaut?
Schwebeablaut can be a noun or a verb.

Words near schwebeablaut in the dictionary

  1. Schwarzschild radii
  2. Schwarzschild radius
  3. Schwarzschild's method
  4. Schwarzwald
  5. schwas
  6. schwebeablaut
  7. schwebeablauted
  8. schwebeablauting
  9. schwebeablauts
  10. Schwecke
  11. Schweckes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: schwebeablaut (page history and authors); Schwebeablaut (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: “schwebeablaut.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/schwebeablaut. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.