Different chronological layers of native words
Etymological survey of the Old English vocabulary The OE vocabulary was almost purely Germanic; except for a small number of borrowings, it consisted of native words inherited from PG or formed from native roots and affixes. Native OE words can be subdivided into a number of etymological layers coming from different historical periods. The three main layers in the native OE words are: a) common IE words, 2) common Germanic words, 3) specifically OE words. 1) Words belonging to the common IE layer constitute the oldest part of the OE vocabulary. They were inherited by PG from the IE parent-language and passed into the Germanic languages of various subgroups, including English. Among these words we find names of some natural phenomena, plants and animals, agricultural terms, names of parts of the human body, terms of kinship, etc.; verbs belonging to this layer denote the basic activities of man; adjectives indicate the most essential qualities; this layer includes personal and demonstrative pronouns and most numerals. OE examples of this layer are: eolh ‘elk’, mere 'sea', mōna ‘moon’, trēow ‘tree’, sāwan ‘sow’, næ¥l ‘nail’, beard ‘beard’, brōðor ‘brother’, mōdor ‘mother’, sunu ‘son’, dōn ‘do’, bēon ‘be’, niwe ‘new’, long ‘long’, ic ‘I’, min ‘my’, pæt ‘that’, twā ‘two’, etc.