Show HN: Tree, truth, druid and tar share one Proto-Indo-European root

5 points by stared a day ago · 1 comment · 1 min read

Did you know that truth, druid, dryad, tar and dendrite all grew from the same root as the word tree? A single Proto-Indo-European root, *deru-.

Source code: https://github.com/stared/tree-of-tree

I am grateful to Miroslav Šedivý, a Czechoslovak polyglot I met at PiterPy 2018, who sparked a curiosity that Polish 'zdrowy' (healthy) is from 'drewno' (wood) or 'drzewo' (tree), which are related to the English word 'tree'. A few weeks ago I saw Odd Pride's short on the tree of life, which prompted me to make an explorable explanation (https://p.migdal.pl/blog/2024/05/science-games-explorable-ex...), a medium close to my heart.