dʰeyǵʰ-
“to mold, to form, to knead”mold, shape, knead, build
Root for molding/building, yielding Latin fingere (to shape), English dough, figure, fiction.
Discussion
The Proto-Indo-European root *dʰeyǵʰ- meant "to mold, to form, to knead." Latin fingere, "to shape, to mold," meant to work clay or dough with the fingers. From fingere come fiction (something shaped, hence invented), figure (a formed shape), figment (a thing molded from imagination), feign (to fashion a false appearance), and effigy (a molded likeness). Greek teikhos, "wall," descends from this root through the concept of a wall built from molded material — shaped mud brick rather than stacked stone. The Germanic branch preserved the domestic sense most faithfully. English dough descends from Proto-Germanic *daigaz, the kneaded substance itself. The compound *dǣge, "bread-kneader," became the second element in Old English hlǣfdige, literally "loaf-kneader," which contracted into Modern English lady — making lady and dough cognates, and revealing that the medieval lady's title originated not in aristocratic leisure but in the essential labor of bread-making. What is beyond dispute is that *dʰeyǵʰ- united the work of hands upon yielding material into a single verb from which descended the walls that shelter us, the bread that feeds us, the fictions that enchant us, and the figures by which we understand the world.
Notes
Pokorny 244-245. English dough, dairy, figure, fiction, feign, effigy.