One of the most common items in the Albanian vocabulary, plak ‘old man’, pl. pleq, f. plakë ‘old woman’, has never received a conclusive etymological explanation. Tagliavini (L'albanese di Dalmazia 222–3), following Jokl, properly rejects Meyer's connection with Gk. palaiós. The latter must be related to pálai, and this in turn, together with Skt. ciráḥ and Welsh pell, to IE *kwel-; Pokorny accepts this doctrine (IEW 640). Like Jokl, Tagliavini and Pokorny (IEW 804–5) relate plak to Gk. peliós, poliós, etc., under a base *pel-. This seems like a good fit. But, as we shall see, it is not necessary to follow Jokl in considering the final -ak a suffix from Slavic. Not only does the word bear all the appearances of belonging to the old layer of the vocabulary; there is no evidence that so tenuous an element as pl- could have been segmented as a productive base to receive a borrowed suffix as late as the first millenium a.d. Furthermore, the conservative Greek enclaves show an initial cluster pl-, with no trace of an intervening vowel.