weyḱ-
“house, settlement”dwelling, village, clan
Root for dwelling/settlement, yielding Latin vicus (village), Greek oikos (house), English -wick/-wich.
Discussion
The Proto-Indo-European root *weyḱ- meant "house, settlement, clan" and provides one of the essential windows into early Indo-European social organization. In Latin, the root yielded vīcus "village, quarter, street," which passed through Old French to produce English village and, by semantic inversion, villain — originally merely a farm laborer who became in medieval usage a person of base character. Latin vīcīnus "neighboring" gave English vicinity. Greek oikos (οἶκος) "house, household" descends from the same root, a form of enormous modern productivity: economy (oikonomía, "household management"), ecology (oikología, "study of the dwelling-place"), ecumenical (from oikouménē, "the inhabited world"), and diocese (from dioíkēsis, "administration"). Sanskrit viś- "clan, settlement" confirms the Indo-Iranian branch. The Germanic evidence includes the -wick and -wich of English place names (Warwick, Greenwich, Norwich), preserving the ancient sense of settlement. From a single PIE word for the basic unit of human habitation arose the Greek concept of the managed household (economy), the Roman concept of proximity (vicinity), and the medieval concept of social rank determined by dwelling (villain).
Notes
Pokorny 1131. English -wick, village, vicinity, economy, ecology, parish.