Bone
Sign in to saveEnglish
Root
-baya
to stab, to pierce, to slaughter by stabbing, to butcher
Bone descends from Shona baya, to stab, pierce, hew apart
- Confidence
- 54/100
- Root language
- Shona
- Descent begins
- boneEnglish
The consensus position
Mainstream comparative linguistics derives bone from Old English bān, from Proto-Germanic *bainą 'bone, leg', which has no secure cognate outside Germanic and is often treated as a substrate word; the connection to Proto-Indo-European *bʰeyH- 'to strike' is a proposal, and the inherited Indo-European word for bone was the unrelated *h₃ost-.
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.