noun
- Plural of centum; a group of Indo-European languages characterized by the retention of the velar stop *k as a distinct phoneme (as opposed to satemization).
Usage: linguistics; historical linguistics; technical term
Examples
- The centums include Latin, Greek, Germanic, and Celtic languages.
- Linguists classify Indo-European languages into centums and satems based on how they evolved their velar consonants.
- English, as a Germanic language, belongs to the centums group.
- The distinction between centums and satems is fundamental to historical linguistics.