wedʰ-
“to lead, to wed, to pledge”wed, pledge
Root for leading home a bride, wedding. Gives English "wed", "wedding", Latin vas "surety".
Discussion
The root *wedʰ- ("to lead, to wed, to pledge") is treated in Pokorny (IEW 1115–1116) and LIV² (s.v. *wedʰ-). The root's semantic range—leading, pledging, and marrying—reflects PIE marriage customs in which the bride was formally led from her father's household to her husband's.
In Germanic, the root is most prominent: Old English weddian ("to pledge, to marry") gives Modern English wed and wedding. The original sense was "to pledge, to give surety"—the marriage meaning developed from the pledge exchanged between families. Gothic wadi ("pledge, earnest money") and Old Norse veðja ("to wager, to pledge") confirm the core "pledge" meaning. English wager and wage both derive from Anglo-Norman forms ultimately from Germanic *wadją ("pledge"), showing the semantic development from pledge to payment.
Latin vās, vadis ("surety, bail") continues the root in a legal register, and vadimōnium ("bail-bond") shows the institutional extension. The connection between pledging and legal suretyship is thus preserved in both Germanic and Italic.
Sanskrit vadhū́- ("bride, young wife") preserves the specifically matrimonial sense: the bride as "the one who is led." This is among the clearest lexical evidence for PIE patrilocal marriage customs, in which the woman moved to her husband's household.
Lithuanian vedù, vèsti ("to lead, to marry") preserves both the basic and matrimonial senses simultaneously, as does Old Church Slavonic vedǫ, vesti ("to lead").
The root's ablaut (*wedʰ-/*wodʰ-/*udʰ-) is regular. The convergence of "leading," "pledging," and "marrying" across four independent branches (Germanic, Indo-Iranian, Baltic, Slavic) confirms that all three meanings are reconstructable to the proto-language itself, providing a window into PIE social institutions.
Notes
The bride was "led" to the husband's house; also "wager", "wage"