Language Of Confusion: Ne-, Part V

And now the final part of our look into the Proto Indo European root ne-, which means not. We’ve gotten through all the words, but there are actually quite a few prefixes that come from it.
 
First is the one we’ve already seen a bunch of times: non-. It means not or lack of, from the Anglo French noun-, Old French non-, and classical Latin non, which, as we’ve talked about, just means no. This is definitely the most straightforward of these.
 
Next, in. Well, one version of in, because there are two, one meaning into, in, on, or upon, and the other meaning not, opposite of, or without. And guess what! They aren’t related at all. You just kind of have to guess which in- the prefix is from. The in- we’re looking at was also used in Latin and is of course traced to ne-. Ne- means not, so words with in- mean not. At least, when they’re not the other in-.
 
Directly related to in is an- (note, not the article an, which is completely not related). An- is actually from the Greek an-, not or without, which, like in-, is from ne. Plus there’s also a-, which actually has three different prefix versions. One is related to the article, one means away and is from ab-, and finally there’s the one that’s also from the Greek an- and also means not or without, just without the n.
 
So in- is Latin, and a- and an- are Greek. There’s also un-, which comes to us from the other branch of the family, the Old English un-, which is from the Proto Germanic un-, and obviously that’s from ne-. And much like the other prefixes, there’s another version of it, however this one means pretty close to the same damn thing. Instead of not-, it means reversal or removal, i.e. undo instead of do, and it’s from the Proto Indo European ant-. I’m not even sure how you’re supposed to tell them apart, but that probably doesn’t matter unless you’re studying linguistics.
 
Sources
Online Etymology Dictionary
Google Translate
Omniglot
University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center
University of Texas at San Antonio’s page on Proto Indo European language
Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English
Fordham University