bʰleh₁-
“to blow, to puff”blow, inflate
Root for blowing, yielding Latin flare, Old English blawan (blow), German blasen.
Discussion
*bʰleh₁- is a Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to blow" or "to puff," reconstructed with a laryngeal *h₁ that colors the preceding vowel. The root shows e-grade *bʰleh₁- and zero-grade *bʰl̥h₁-.
In the Germanic branch, the root undergoes Grimm's Law: PIE *bʰ > Germanic *b, yielding Old English blāwan ("to blow"), Modern English "blow," and German blasen. The Latin reflex is flāre ("to blow, to breathe"), with *bʰ > f by regular sound change, giving rise to "inflate," "deflate," and "flatulence." In Slavic, the root appears in Old Church Slavonic bljusti.
The semantic range spans natural phenomena (wind, breath) and extended meanings like inflating and blossoming. English "blast," "bladder," and "blaze" may also derive from extensions of this root. The connection between blowing and flowering appears in Latin flōs ("flower"), from a suffixed form *bʰleh₃-s, though some scholars assign this to a separate but related root.
The ablaut pattern is typical of PIE verb roots, with full-grade forms in the present stem and zero-grade in participial formations.
Notes
Pokorny 120-122. English blow, blast, bladder.
Related Roots
English Words from *bʰleh₁-
These modern English words descend from this root. Each page traces the full journey from PIE to present-day English.