Knee: 'Knee' and 'genuflect' are the same… | etymologist.ai
knee
/niː/·noun·before 900 CE·Established
Origin
From OldEnglish 'cneo' andPIE *gonu — cognate with Latin 'genu' and Greek 'gonu,' root of 'genuflect.'
Definition
The joint between the thigh and the lower leg.
The Full Story
Proto-Indo-Europeanbefore 900 CEwell-attested
From OldEnglish 'cnēo' (the joint of the leg, a knee), from Proto-Germanic *knewą, from PIE *ǵónu (knee). This is one of the most securely reconstructed Proto-Indo-European body-part terms — cognates span virtually every branch of the family and converge on the same form with remarkable consistency. Latin 'genū,' Greek 'gónu,' Sanskrit 'jā́nu,' Hittite 'genu,' Avestan 'znum,' Tocharian 'kanwe,' and
Did you know?
'Knee' and 'genuflect' are the same word at different levels of disguise. English 'knee' comes from PIE *ǵónu through Germanic (where the *ǵ became k), while 'genuflect' comes from the same PIE root through Latin 'genū.' The silent 'k' in 'knee' was pronounced until the seventeenth century