gʷem-tú-
“a coming, arrival”advent, adventure, avenue, event
Abstract from *gʷem- giving Latin adventus, English advent, adventure, avenue, event, prevent.
Discussion
The Proto-Indo-European nominal derivative *gʷem-tú- designates the abstract concept of "a coming" or "arrival," formed with the productive *-tu- suffix from the verbal root *gʷem- "to come, to go," one of the most elemental motion verbs reconstructed for the proto-language. Pokorny (IEW 464–465) establishes the root as widely attested across the daughter branches, while Rix (LIV² 209) confirms its athematic present stem with ablaut alternations visible in the oldest records. The *-tu- formation, denoting the result or process of the verbal action, produced a noun whose reflexes appear wherever Indo-European speakers settled and whose semantic range — from physical arrival to metaphysical advent — mirrors the cultural importance of journeying itself.
In Latin, the root surfaces most transparently in the compound adventus "a coming toward," which passed through Old French into English as advent, originally designating the liturgical season anticipating Christ's arrival before generalizing to any momentous coming. The same Latin base yielded adventūra "that which is about to happen," source of English adventure, and through the participial stem, the noun ēventus "outcome" gave English event — literally "that which comes out." The form avenue descends from French avenu, past participle of avenir "to come to," itself from Latin advenīre, describing a path by which one arrives. Greek preserves the root with characteristic loss of the labiovelar in βαίνειν (bainein) "to go, to walk," with its rich family of derivatives including βάσις (basis) "a stepping" and the -βατης (-batēs) agent suffix seen in acrobat. Sanskrit retains the root in its most archaic form as gam- "to go," appearing in the Rigveda with high frequency.
In the Germanic branch, the root underwent the expected sound changes to produce Old English cuman, Modern English come, while the compound *wil-kuman- "one who comes as desired" yielded welcome, preserving the original sense of volitional arrival. The semantic coherence across five millennia — from the reconstructed *gʷem-tú- through Latin adventus to English adventure — testifies to the enduring centrality of motion and arrival in Indo-European conceptual vocabulary.