krewh₂-
“raw flesh, blood”raw flesh, gore
Root for raw/bloody flesh, yielding Latin cruor, Greek kreas, Old English hreaw (raw).
Discussion
The Proto-Indo-European root *krewh₂- denoted raw flesh and blood, occupying a semantic space that was visceral in the most literal sense: it named meat in its uncooked, bleeding state, the animal body before fire transformed it into food. Pokorny (IEW 621) reconstructs the root within a cluster of forms relating to blood, flesh, and the rawness of unprocessed tissue, and its reflexes confirm a meaning that is strikingly consistent across the family. Sanskrit kravíṣ- (raw flesh, carrion) preserves what may be closest to the original sense, appearing in Vedic texts in contexts of sacrifice and battlefield carnage. Greek kréas (flesh, meat), the source of English pancreas (literally all-flesh), continues the root in its most neutral alimentary sense, though even here the word tends toward uncooked or freshly butchered meat rather than a prepared dish. Latin crūdus (raw, bloody, unripe) — whence English crude and cruel — shows a characteristic semantic development: from raw flesh to the quality of rawness itself, and thence to the metaphorical cruelty of one who is, as it were, still bloody and unrefined. The English word raw itself descends from the same root through Germanic *hrawaz (Old English hrēaw), with the expected loss of initial *k- under Grimm's Law yielding *h-, which was subsequently lost in most English dialects. This makes raw one of the oldest native English words for a bodily concept, though its PIE origins are thoroughly disguised by sound change. Old Irish crú (blood) and Welsh crau (blood, gore) attest the root in Celtic with a narrowing to the liquid rather than the tissue. Beekes discusses the Greek forms in detail, accepting the connection to the broader family while noting that kréas shows an s-stem formation typical of old neuter nouns for substances. Watkins places *krewh₂- among the PIE roots reflecting the realities of a pastoral and sacrificial culture in which the distinction between raw and cooked flesh carried ritual as well as practical significance — a distinction famously central to Lévi-Strauss's anthropological framework, though rooted in linguistic facts far older than structuralism. The laryngeal *h₂ is reflected in the length and quality of vowels in several branches and helps account for the Sanskrit and Latin vocalism.
Notes
Pokorny 621. English raw, cruel, crude all from this root.