The Lady (Almost) Vanishes
Résumé
Discussion of the alleged reflexes of the PIE word for 'woman', that can be reconstructed as *sor-/*ser-. Alternative reconstructions are falsified. This noun has been used as a quasi suffix for referring to female beings, at the stage where there was no feminine gender, nor any feminine suffix. The point of departure of this morpheme was in univerbated phrases, as seen in Anatolian. New interpretation of PIE *swe-sor- 'sister'. Latin uxor does not contain this lexeme, and can be explained totally differently, as a delocatival derivative, based on a noun for 'house, home'.