Indogermanic

Indo-Germanic, also Indogermanic, is a historical term once used to refer to the Indo-European language family. It was common in 18th- to early 20th-century linguistic literature, particularly among German scholars, and reflects the German term Indogermanisch.

The concept encompassed all languages descended from Proto-Indo-European, spanning Europe and the Indian subcontinent. In practice, authors varied in scope, but the core idea was a single ancestral language with multiple branches, including Indo-Iranian, Greek, Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Balto-Slavic, Armenian, Anatolian, and Tocharian among others.

Today the term is largely obsolete in scholarly usage, with Indo-European serving as the standard umbrella for the language family. The shift occurred as linguistic classification matured and terminology was standardized for clarity and precision. The association with the word Germanic in the compound contributed to its decline, as modern nomenclature emphasizes broader geographic and genealogical relationships rather than two-part labels.

Indo-Germanic survives mainly in historical discussions and in older texts or non-English sources that retain the traditional designation. It is of interest to readers studying the history of linguistics and the development of language-family classifications.

See also: Proto-Indo-European, Indo-European languages.