PERMANENT DISPUTE RECORD
ALL DISPUTES ↗One scholarly question. Every attached source. The present editorial state, without pretending the last word has been written.
No. English fiend continues Old English feónd; Gothic fijands is a collateral Germanic cousin from the same reconstructed formation, not the donor of the English word.
/ˈfi.jands/ · Gothic masculine nd-stem common noun
A Gothic masculine nd-stem noun conventionally glossed enemy. Project Wulfila currently exposes 26 candidates: three verified noun assignments, two further noun-only assignments, and 21 surface forms also listed under the living verb fijan. Ayora Estevan explains the collision diachronically: Proto-Germanic had already lexicalized the present-participial *fi(j)and- as enemy, while Gothic retained productive one-who-hates participles beside the noun. The five noun-only candidates use fiand, fijands, fijande, and fijandis; all five were inspected in Codex Argenteus facsimiles.
DIRECT CLAIM EVIDENCE
A citation is not a vote. Each record says whether the work supports, challenges, contradicts, or contextualizes the position—and identifies the exact locus used.
Supplies the direct English branch history.
Grammar and etymology from feónd through Middle English formsPlaces the forms on collateral branches.
p. 47 note 24, Gothic and Old English as Germanic parallelsThe graph connects both branches at *fi(j)and- rather than drawing a Gothic-to-English arrow.