Select Search ----- All Bartleby.com ----- All Reference ----- Columbia Encyclopedia World History Encyclopedia Cultural Literacy World Factbook Columbia Gazetteer American Heritage Coll. Dictionary Roget's Thesauri Roget's II: Thesaurus Roget's Int'l Thesaurus Quotations Bartlett's Quotations Columbia Quotations Simpson's Quotations Respectfully Quoted English Usage Modern Usage American English Fowler's King's English Strunk's Style Mencken's Language Cambridge History The King James Bible Oxford Shakespeare Gray's Anatomy Farmer's Cookbook Post's Etiquette Brewer's Phrase & Fable Bulfinch's Mythology Frazer's Golden Bough ----- All Verse ----- Anthologies Dickinson, E. Eliot, T.S. Frost, R. Hopkins, G.M. Keats, J. Lawrence, D.H. Masters, E.L. Sandburg, C. Sassoon, S. Whitman, W. Wordsworth, W. Yeats, W.B. ----- All Nonfiction ----- Harvard Classics American Essays Einstein's Relativity Grant, U.S. Roosevelt, T. Wells's History Presidential Inaugurals ----- All Fiction ----- Shelf of Fiction Ghost Stories Short Stories Shaw, G.B. Stein, G. Stevenson, R.L. Wells, H.G. Reference > American Heritage® > Dictionary   PREVIOUS NEXT   CONTENTS · INDEX · ILLUSTRATIONS · BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD    The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition.  2000.   Appendix I Indo-European Roots   ENTRY: penkwe DEFINITION: Five. Derivatives include five, Pentecost, quintessence, finger, and foist.    I. Basic form *penkwe. 1. Assimilated form *pempe. a. (i) five; fifty, from Old English ff, five, with derivative fftig, fifty (-tne, ten; see dek); (ii) fin2, from Old High German finf, funf, five. Both (i) and (ii) from Germanic *fimf; b. (i) fifteen, from Old English fftne, fifteen; (ii) femto-, from Old Norse fimmtn, fifteen. Both (i) and (ii) from Germanic compound *fimftehun, fifteen (*tehun, ten; see dek). 2. Assimilated form *kwenkwe. a. cinquain, cinque, quinque-; cinquecento, cinquefoil, quincunx, from Latin qunque, five; b. keno, quinate, from Latin distributive qun, five each; c. quindecennial, from Latin compound qundecim, fifteen (decem, ten; see dek); d. quincentenary, from Latin qungent, five hundred. 3. penta-, pentad; penstemon, pentagon, pentameter, pentathlon, from Greek pente, five. 4. punch3; pachisi, from Sanskrit pañca, five.    II. Compound *penkwe-(d)konta, “five tens,” fifty (*-(d)konta, group of ten; see dek). 1. quinquagenarian, Quinquagesima, from Latin qunqugint, fifty. 2. Pentecost, pinkster flower, from Greek pentkonta, fifty.    III. Ordinal adjective *penkw-to-. 1. fifth, from Old English ffta, fifth, from Germanic *fimftn-. 2. quint1, quintain, quintet, quintile; quintessence, quintillion, quintuple, from Latin quntus (< *quinc-tos), feminine qunta, fifth.    IV. Suffixed form *penkw-ro-. finger, from Old English finger, finger, from Germanic *fingwraz, finger (< “one of five”).    V. Suffixed reduced zero-grade form *pk-sti-. a. fist, from Old English fst, fist; b. foist, from Dutch vuist, fist. Both a and b from Germanic *funhstiz. (Pokorny penke 808, pksti- 839.)     The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. CONTENTS · INDEX · ILLUSTRATIONS · BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD   PREVIOUS NEXT     Click here to shop the Bartleby Bookstore. Welcome · Press · Advertising · Linking · Terms of Use · © 2008 Bartleby.com