Trace a word to its ancestor
Enter a word in any language. We’ll follow its history back to its oldest known root and uncover its relatives across thousands of languages.
A story in one root
Baghdad, data & a dowry
Baghdad comes from Old Persian Baga-dāta, “given by god”. That -dāta, “given”, is the same word as Latin datum, “a thing given”, whose plural data now fills our spreadsheets. Both grew from one Proto-Indo-European root, *deh₃-, “to give”, which also became Sanskrit dāna(“gift”), and reached English as donate, dose and dowry, through Latin and Greek.
What you can explore
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Follow a word back, step by step, to its oldest known root: inherited, borrowed or built from parts, with the language and period of every ancestor.
Two ways to see it
Radial puts the root at the centre and its descendants around it, grouped by language family. Tree lays the same family out as cards you can expand.
Same meaning, other languages
Compare “chair” with silla, കസേര or كرسي and draw their lineages side by side. Sometimes they meet at a common ancestor, sometimes not.
Cousins & stories
See the words in your language that grew from the same root (data, donate, dose, Baghdad) with a short story of how one root became many words.
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Pronunciations with recordings, approximate readings of reconstructed words, and when each language or word was in use.
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Type in native script or romanized (अमृत or amrta), or search by meaning: “fog” in Sanskrit finds नीहार.