Ur-Germanic
Ur-Germanic proper noun: hypothetical prehistoric ancestor language of all Germanic languages, including English; Proto-Germanic.
Proper noun
Ur-Germanic
- Hypothetical prehistoric ancestor language of all Germanic languages, including English; Proto-Germanic.
- If now these prefixes are to be connected, as it seems they should be, they point to an urgermanic vowel sound differing but little, if any, in degree of openness from urgermanic e.1896, Frank Hamilton Fowler, The negatives of the Indo-European languages
- In Germanic the distinction between perfectives and imperfectives is a survival of what was perhaps a vital distinction in Ur-germanic.1917, University of North Carolina (1793-1962). Philological Club, Studies in philology
- Synonyms:
- Common Germanic, Germanic, Proto-Germanic
Examples of Ur-Germanic in a sentence
- This practice of divided sovereignty over land, which survived into the twentieth century as the Almen of Upper Germany, seemed also to Biicher to respond to “an Ur-Germanic instinct,” [...]2005, Heath Pearson, Origins of Law and Economics:
- They stood in relation to these various tribes as an Ur-Germanic people of remarkable size and prowess.2010, John D. Niles, Homo Narrans: The Poetics and Anthropology of Oral Literature:
- Before the early 1930s, pamphlets and journals hardly ever celebrated incineration as an ur-Germanic tradition.2011, Alon Confino, Paul Betts, Dirk Schumann, Between Mass Death and Individual Loss:
Synonyms of Ur-Germanic
Forms of Ur-Germanic
| alternative form | Urgermanic |
|---|---|
| alternative form | Urgermanish |
Origin of Ur-Germanic
From ur- (“original”) + Germanic.
Questions about Ur-Germanic
- What does Ur-Germanic mean?
- Ur-Germanic means hypothetical prehistoric ancestor language of all Germanic languages, including English; Proto-Germanic.
- How do you use Ur-Germanic in a sentence?
- This practice of divided sovereignty over land, which survived into the twentieth century as the Almen of Upper Germany, seemed also to Biicher to respond to “an Ur-Germanic instinct,” [...]
- What part of speech is Ur-Germanic?
- Ur-Germanic is a proper noun.
Words near Ur-Germanic in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: Ur-Germanic (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: “Ur-Germanic.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ur-germanic. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.