sister
A female sibling; a woman sharing parents with another.
PIE *swésor
Etymology
From Old English sweostor, from Proto-Germanic *swestēr, from PIE *swésor "sister." The PIE form may originally have meant "woman of the group" from *swe- "self, own" + *-sor, a feminine agentive suffix. The word has remained remarkably stable across six millennia of change, recognizable in nearly every Indo-European language.
The Journey: *swésor → sister
PIE~4500 BCE
*swésor
Proto-Germanic~500 BCE
*swestēr
Old English~450 CE
sweostor
Middle English~1200 CE
sister
Modern English~1500 CE
sister
Cognates Across Languages
These words in other languages descend from the same PIE root *swésor. They are not borrowings but independent inheritances from a common ancestor.
| Language | Word |
|---|---|
| Greek | (lost, replaced by adelphē) |
| Latin | soror |
| Russian | sestra |
| Sanskrit | svasṛ |
| Old Irish | siur |
| Lithuanian | sesuo |
Did You Know?
English "sister" and Sanskrit "svasṛ" are so similar that early linguists used this word as key evidence for the Indo-European language family.