peh₂w-ro-
“small, little, few”pauper, poor, poverty, puerile
Extended form giving Latin pauper, English poor, poverty, puerile.
Discussion
The PIE form *peh₂w-ro- (small, little, few) is an adjectival derivative of the root *peh₂w- (few, small, little), with the suffix *-ro- forming a basic adjective. The root produced one of the most socially charged word families in Indo-European, a vocabulary of poverty and smallness that has shaped legal, religious, and economic discourse for millennia.
Latin paucus (few, little) and pauper (poor — literally "producing little," a compound of *peh₂w- with *per- "to produce") are the central reflexes. From pauper English derives: poor, poverty, pauper, pauperize, impoverish (through French apovrir). The legal term pauper (a person too poor to pay court costs, entitled to sue in forma pauperis) preserves the original Latin form as a technical term.
Latin parvus (small, little) is sometimes connected to the same root, though some scholars derive it from a different formation. If related, it adds: parcel (a small part), particle (a very small part), particular (relating to a single small part, hence specific), and parse (to break into small parts, originally to identify the parts of speech — grammatical analysis as a form of division).
The English word few itself descends from Old English fēaw, from PGmc *fawaz, from PIE *peh₂w-. The Germanic reflexes are clustered: Gothic fawai (few), Old Norse fár (few), and the modern Scandinavian forms. The simplicity and brevity of few — a three-letter word from a three-phoneme PIE root — reflects the conservatism typical of basic quantifier vocabulary.
Latin puer (boy, child — literally "the small one") may also derive from this root, though this is debated. If correct, it extends the family to include: puerile (childish), puberty (from pūbēs, "of age," related to puer), and pupil (both the student and the eye's opening — the pupil of the eye is named from Latin pūpilla, "little girl," because of the tiny reflected image visible in another person's eye).
The foal connection is transparent: English foal (young horse, a small horse) from OE fola, from PGmc *fulô, is derived from PIE *peh₂w-lo- (the little one) — a foal is etymologically "the small one." Latin pullus (young animal, chick) is the same formation, giving English pullet, poultry, and the Pullman car (named after George Pullman, but his surname derives from the same root via "pool-man" or "foal-keeper").
The conceptual equation of smallness with youth, poverty, and insufficiency is deeply embedded in the IE vocabulary. The PIE speakers who used *peh₂w- to describe something as "few" or "small" generated descendants that now describe economic deprivation (poverty), physical immaturity (puerile), and quantitative scarcity (few, paucity). The root connects the nursery to the courtroom.