Münchener Studien zur Sprachwissenschaft 74/1 (2021) 109–132 ALEXANDER NIKOLAEV Vedic rūrá- ‘burning hot’, Ossetic arawyn ‘to scorch in fire’, Greek ἀλέᾱ ‘heat’, Old Irish loscaid ‘burns’, and Latin lūstrum ‘ritual purification’ * Für Martin Peters zum Geburtstag Abstract: A new PIE root *h 2 leu̯ h x - ‘to burn’ is reconstructed in this paper based on several new etymological analyses. Zusammenfassung: Eine neue idg. Wurzel *h 2 leu̯ h x - ‚brennen‘ wird aufgrund neuer etymologischer Analysen angesetzt. 1. In the Atharvaveda we find an adjective rūrá- meaning ‘deliriously hot’ which is used to denote a kind of takmán- ‘fever’. 1 The adjective is attested in AVŚ 1.25.4 (~ AVP 1.32.4), AVŚ 5.22.10, 13 (~ AVP * Greek texts are abbreviated after Liddell–Scott–Jones; Latin texts are abbreviated after Oxford Latin Dictionary. Translations of Greek and Latin texts are from Loeb Classical Library, unless otherwise indicated. This paper was originally presented at Harvard University on April 12 th 2019, as well as at the 38 th East Coast Indo-European conference (University of Penn- sylvania) on June 22 nd 2019, and I am grateful to participants on both occasions for their helpful comments, in particular, Craig Melchert, Jeremy Rau, and Michael Weiss. I would also like to thank Joe Eska, Jeffrey Henderson, David Sasseville, Stefan Schumacher, and Martin Schwartz for answering my queries and David Buyaner, Stefan Höfler, Hiroshi Kumamoto, Sergio Neri, Norbert Oettinger, Massimo Poetto, and the editors for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Errors, of course, are mine alone. 1 Possibly malaria, see Zysk 1985: 34–7.