Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/bʰréh₂tēr

Reconstruction
Both Sanskrit and Ancient Greek reflexes have a radical stress throughout the paradigm, which indicates that this accentuation was original, and that the PIE word for had an acrostatic inflection. Archaicity of the paradigm is furthermore indicated by the fact that the rest of the inherited kinship terms in Sanskrit have suffixal and desinential accent, so the pattern for the word for could not arise by analogy. The hysterokinetic inflection of other kinship terms (e.g. for and, both of which end in ) did exert influence in the two, which is evident by the absence of zero-grade in the suffix syllable (Sanskrit forms with ,  etc., Greek with ,  etc.).

The root vowel is short in all of the reflexes, and no trace of lengthened grade can be found: in no language did Eichner's law operate (which predicts non-coloration of the in ). Furthermore, in Balto-Slavic one can find an acute vowel (reflecting ) instead of a circumflex vowel (which would reflect ).

This lexeme is widespread, though absent from Albanian and rare in Anatolian. Because it means in Greek,  and meant both  and   (or ) in Celtic (e.g. 🇨🇬) and Baltic (e.g. in Latvian and Old Prussian), some suspect it had similarly wider meaning in PIE, though it is also possible the broader senses developed independently.

Noun

 * 1)  brother

Descendants

 * Anatolian:
 * (brafrsis; stem brafr-)
 * Armenian:
 * , genitive

*bʰréh₂tēr fr:Annexe:indo-européen commun/*bʰréh₂tēr