πνεῦμαpneuma
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Root
pemha
to pant, to breathe hard, to gasp for air; by extension to beg, to plead breathlessly
Pneuma descends from Shona pemha, to pant, to breathe hard
- Confidence
- 72/100
- Root language
- Shona
- Descent begins
- πνεῦμαAncient Greek
The consensus position
Mainstream comparative linguistics derives πνεῦμα from the Greek verb πνέω "to blow, breathe" plus the resultative suffix -μα, on a Proto-Indo-European base *pnew- "to breathe, snort", whose only solid comparanda are the Germanic sneeze and snort words such as Old English fnēosan and Old Norse fnýsa. Some handbooks treat the base as an independent onomatopoeic formation in each branch rather than an inherited lexical root, and no relation to any Bantu language is recognised.
The working behind this.
The full descent — 7 links from the attested form down to the root — the segment-by-segment correspondences, the phonological breakdown and the case for the derivation are behind an account.
An account opens 10 entries in full, free.
Elsewhere in the corpus
- Pelagiaparato spread out, to lay out flat, to clear a surface level
- Kérberoskerekato be smeared, streaked, marked with dirt; causative kerekedza, to streak or daub
- ἀποκτείνω-tekanato be cut off, be broken off, be severed, to snap
- μάχαιραmhakamatter, case, dispute, cause of quarrel; fault, blame, the grounds on which one is answerable
- βλασφημία-bvato come out, to issue forth; in the derived bvuma, to give voice, to assent
- Theosmutsakindness, favour, mercy