Etymograph

English

pabulum

Pabulum comes from Latin pābulum ‘food, nourishment’, and goes back to Proto-Indo-European *peh₂- ‘to protect, to ward’.

  1. Proto-Indo-Europeanc. 4500–2500 BCE*peh₂-1‘to protect, to ward’root named by Wiktionary
  2. Proto-Indo-Europeanc. 4500–2500 BCE*peh₂-dʰlom1reconstructed
  3. Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEpāscō1‘to nourish’
  4. Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEpābulum1‘food, nourishment’
  5. Englishearliest quotation 1727pabulum1

attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor

  1. 1 Wiktionary, English pabulum
  2. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1727, Tobias Swinden, The Improbability of Hell Fire’s Being in, or about the Cent: “[…] But when we find that they [volcanoes] are…”.

Lineage

  1. Proto-Indo-Europeanc. 4500–2500 BCE*peh₂-Wiktionary, English pabulum‘to protect, to ward’root named by Wiktionary
  2. Proto-Indo-Europeanc. 4500–2500 BCE*peh₂-dʰlomWiktionary, English pabulumreconstructed
  3. Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEpāscōWiktionary, English pabulum‘to nourish’
  4. Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEpābulumWiktionary, English pabulum‘food, nourishment’
  5. Englishearliest quotation 1727pabulumWiktionary, English pabulum. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1727, Tobias Swinden, The Improbability of Hell Fire’s Being in, or about the Cent: “[…] But when we find that they [volcanoes] are…”

Linked words

through Proto-Indo-European *peh₂- ‘to protect, to ward’

food, company, father, pain, feed, pope, pattern, foster, apparent, fur, companion, penetration, papa, patriot, patron, fodder, pastoral, perpetrator, fad, pasture, forage, accompaniment, paternal, paternity, ayr, padre, perpetrate, patrician, panini, patrimony, pater, pav, compere, pantaloons, pannier, 57 more

through Latin pāscō ‘to nourish’

pastor, 13 more

Today it means

noun Food or fodder, particularly that taken in by plants or animals.

Sources

Sources: Wiktionary, “pabulum”. By Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0, via kaikki.org (dump of Oct 3 2026); text adapted and restructured. Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word. License.

Etymograph / Proto-Indo-European *peh₂- / pabulum

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