dis

Note: Latin dis- is conventionally linked with bi- bi- entry 1, bis "twice," going back to *duis, but the loss of -u- is unexplained (perhaps from Indo-European *dus- "bad, dys-," otherwise unattested in Latin, crossed with duis-?). Possibly related are Greek diá "apart, through" (see dia-), assuming *dis-a-, and the West Germanic prefix represented by Old Saxon and Old Frisian te- "apart, in pieces," Old High German zi-, ze- (also zer-, perhaps crossed with zur-, Old English and Old Norse tor- "with difficulty," Gothic tuz-, from the Germanic outcome of Indo-European *dus-) and Old English and Old Saxon to- (assimilated to tō to entry 1?); the Gothic counterpart dis- "apart, away," with apparently unshifted d-, has no accepted explanation.