dʰeh₁-lo-
“that which is established, customary”ritual, habitual
Extended form of *dʰeh₁- related to established practice, ritual.
Discussion
The form *dʰeh₁-lo- is a thematic derivative built on the prolific Proto-Indo-European root *dʰeh₁- meaning "to put, place, establish, do." The suffixed form carries the sense "that which is established" or "that which is customary," reflecting the conceptual bridge in early Indo-European societies between the act of placing or setting down and the emergence of fixed custom and law. Beekes connects this semantic field to Greek thémis (θέμις), the personified concept of divine law and established custom, derived from the zero-grade *dʰh₁- with a different suffix but sharing the same foundational notion of what has been laid down as binding. On the Italic side, the root *dʰeh₁- underwent the characteristic shift of PIE *dʰ to Latin f in word-initial position, yielding the enormously productive Latin stem fac- / fec- from which facilis ("easy," literally "that which is doable") descends. The English derivatives through this Latin pathway include: facile (preserving the sense of ease most directly), faculty (the capacity or ability to do), fact (that which has been done or established), and feasible (capable of being done, entering English through Old French faisable from Latin facere). The semantic range of this single PIE root thus spans from the sacred and juridical domain of divinely established custom in Greek to the pragmatic Latin vocabulary of action, ability, and accomplishment. This breadth testifies to the fundamental importance of the concept "to place, to establish" in Proto-Indo-European culture, where the act of setting something down carried both concrete and abstract force.