Word Origin Summary

*(s)mal- is attested in Proto-Indo-European. Follow the ancestry chain below to trace where this term came from and how it branched into later descendants.

Descendants and Related Terms

• malplassert

  Norwegian Nynorsk · derived from

• malplassert

  Norwegian Bokmål · derived from

• mal

  Middle French · inherited from

• mal

  Guinea-Bissau Creole · derived from

• malvais

  French · inherited from

• mau

  Bourguignon · inherited from

• small

  English · derived from

• mal

  Dutch · derived from

What You Can Explore

• 🗺️Geographic migration map — see where this word traveled
• 🌳Language family tree — trace connections across related languages
• 📅Historical timeline — when the word entered different languages
• 🔤Cognates — related words in other languages sharing the same root