These 7 Words Are Practically Immortal — And You’re Still Using Them

Let’s take a look at a few words that are, for lack of a better term, basically indestructible.

These aren’t just old words. These are words that have survived everything.

Empires, floods, conquests, printing presses, bad etymologies, worse etymologists. And they’re still here. Still rolling off your tongue every single day.

Linguists trace many of these all the way back to Proto-Indo-European (PIE), a theoretical common ancestor of most European and some Asian languages, spoken roughly 6,000 to 9,000 years ago.

And somehow, someway, these words stuck around.

Key Takeaways

? Proto-Indo-European (PIE) Was Never Written: PIE is a reconstructed language — no one wrote it down, but we can trace it through patterns in modern languages.

? PIE is the Common Ancestor of Hundreds of Languages: English, Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Russian, and many more can all be traced back to PIE roots.

? Some Words Stayed Shockingly Intact: Words like “mother,” “name,” and “water” have changed very little in thousands of years, across cultures and continents.

?️ The Oldest Words Tell Us What Mattered Most: The words that survived — for family, identity, survival — show us what ancient people valued.

?️ Language Evolves — But Some Sounds Are Forever: Even as grammar and syntax shift, certain roots are just too fundamental to lose.

1. Mother

Mother might just be the word with the longest unbroken streak in linguistic history.

From PIE meh₂tēr to Latin mater, Greek mētēr, Sanskrit mātṛ, and good old English mother — it’s barely changed.

Why? Because it’s one of the first words babies say. “Ma” is almost a biological default. A sound that requires little tongue movement, and just enough vocal cord involvement.

Language, it turns out, has a soft spot for moms.

2. You

Here’s a word you say constantly. Probably a hundred times a day.

“You” comes from PIE tuH, which also gave us Latin tu, German du, French tu, and Russian ty. It’s short, sharp, and crucial.

It’s the word we use when we point. When we argue. When we love. When we accuse.

We may change languages, but we never stop needing “you.”

3. Fire

Back before we invented writing, we invented s’mores.

Okay, maybe not quite. But fire? Absolutely.

From PIE péh₂wr̥ (that’s pronounced roughly like “peh-wr”) we get Greek pyr, Latin pyra, and Sanskrit pu. English takes a more Germanic route but is still connected.

Fire was life. Warmth. Protection. Dinner. And maybe most importantly: community. A word this central wasn’t going to fade easily.

4. Water

Speaking of elemental survival…

“Water” is another word that humans never seemed to let go of.

It comes from PIE wódr̥, which eventually gave us English water, German Wasser, Russian voda, and Sanskrit udán.

It’s one of the few words where the sound didn’t wander too far. Apparently, people didn’t want to get creative when it came to staying alive.

5. Name

You have one. Your dog has one. Your sourdough starter probably has one.

The word “name” comes from PIE nómen. This one is ridiculously consistent: Latin nomen, Greek onoma, English name.

It stuck because it serves a fundamental need: identity. Humans like to label things, especially other humans. Even cavemen, apparently.

6. Star

Imagine the first humans looking up.

Before calendars, before apps, before Elon Musk launched shiny things into orbit — there were stars.

From PIE h₂stḗr, we get Latin stella, Greek astḗr, and English star. They lit the sky, guided sailors, and terrified night-shift farmers.

If a word deserved to be eternal, it’s this one.

7. Man

Yeah. It’s not going anywhere.

“Man” comes from PIE manu-, a root meaning… man. (Sometimes also human in general.)

It survives in English man, German Mann, Sanskrit manus. It’s likely older than the concept of nations. Or pants.

It doesn’t mean masculinity in the modern sense. It meant human, person, someone upright and ambulatory.

You know. A man. Or a woman. Or anything in between. Whatever walked upright and didn’t immediately bite you.

Spoken then, spoken now.

We talk a lot about language change. About slang, evolution, borrowed words, shifts in meaning, sound drift, dialects, and everything in between.

But sometimes, just sometimes, a word is too good to let go.

Some of these have lasted 8,000 years or more. Spoken by people with no writing system, no maps, no smartphones, no Twitter. Just breath and need and sound.

And we’re still using them. With new meanings, yes. New syntax, new accents. But the bones? The bones are old.

These words refused to die.

And somehow, they found their way to you.

Marcel Iseli

Hey fellow Linguaholics! It’s me, Marcel. I am the proud owner of linguaholic.com. Languages have always been my passion and I have studied Linguistics, Computational Linguistics and Sinology at the University of Zurich. It is my utmost pleasure to share with all of you guys what I know about languages and linguistics in general.