preh₂-
“to ask, to pray”ask, pray, entreat
Root for asking/praying, yielding Latin precari (to pray), German fragen, English pray.
Discussion
The Proto-Indo-European root *preh₂- carried the sense "to ask, to request, to pray," establishing one of the foundational verbal stems for ritual petition and inquiry. Pokorny (IEW 821) reconstructed the root with a laryngeal that surfaces in the lengthened-grade derivatives of Latin and Sanskrit. In Latin, the root produced precārī "to pray, to entreat," whence English pray, prayer, and precarious — this last originally meaning "obtained by entreaty," therefore uncertain, dependent on another's favor. The prefixed form dēprecārī "to avert by prayer" gave English deprecate, while imprecārī yielded imprecation, a calling-down of curses. Sanskrit praś- (pracchati, "he asks") reflects the expected satem treatment. The Germanic reflex appears with Grimm's Law as German fragen ("to ask"), and more subtly in English fraught, originally "laden" — from a mercantile sense of goods requested and loaded. Rix (LIV²) lists the root as *preh₂- with present-stem formations in both Indo-Iranian and Italic. The semantic range is notable: from humble petition (pray) to legal uncertainty (precarious) to commercial cargo (fraught), the descendants chart the full arc from ritual speech to material consequence.
Notes
Pokorny 821-822. English pray, precarious, deprecate, imprecation.