h₂enh₃-
“to breathe, blow”Source of Latin anima, English animal, animate
Root for breathing, producing Latin anima (soul/breath) and English animal, animate, animus.
Discussion
The PIE root *h₂enh₃- (to breathe, to blow) is a variant or closely related form of *h₂enh₁- (to breathe), with a different laryngeal. The distinction between *h₂enh₁- and *h₂enh₃- reflects ongoing scholarly debate about the precise laryngeal analysis of the breathing root.
The reflexes attributed to this variant include forms where the laryngeal *h₃ produces o-colouring rather than the a-colouring of *h₂enh₁-. Some scholars treat the two as a single root with allomorphic variation; others maintain them as distinct formations.
The core vocabulary — Latin anima (soul, breath), Greek ánemos (wind), Sanskrit ātman (self, soul) — is fully treated under *h₂enh₁-eyo- (the iterative formation, id 1452). The present entry preserves the variant reconstruction for scholarly completeness.
What is certain across all analyses is that PIE had a dedicated root for breathing that generated vocabulary for soul, spirit, wind, and animation across every major branch. Whether the laryngeal was *h₁ or *h₃ affects the technical reconstruction but not the cultural significance: the PIE speakers who equated breathing with being alive laid the conceptual foundation for Western concepts of the soul.