*SET-U

PERMANENT DISPUTE RECORD

ALL DISPUTES ↗
CLAIM / COUNTERCLAIM / LIMITRECORD 473

DISPUTE
RECORD.

One scholarly question. Every attached source. The present editorial state, without pretending the last word has been written.

resolvedestablished

Can Feind refer only to a personal human enemy?

No. Duden also records hostile powers, enemy soldiers or troops, threats to a group, figurative natural enemies, and opponents of practices or causes.

WORD UNDER REVIEWDISPUTE 473

Feind

/faɪ̯nt/ · German masculine noun

The modern German noun for a personal, political, military, or ideological enemy or opponent. Duden derives it through Middle High German vīnt or vīant and Old High German fīand, literally the hating one; DWDS dates Old High German fīant and fījant to the eighth century and identifies the Germanic ancestor as a petrified substantivized present participle. Grimm’s dictionary independently compares Gothic fijands, Old English fēond, English fiend, Dutch vijand, and Nordic forms, while warning that its own still-deeper foam hypothesis required confirmation. The reviewed route therefore follows the inherited enemy noun to reconstructed *fi(j)and- and *fi(j)ēn-, then treats *peh₁- as proposed and stops.

01

DIRECT CLAIM EVIDENCE

1 SOURCES WITH A STANCE

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.

SOURCE 01supportscontemporary dictionary

Duden — Feind

Documents personal, group-threatening, military, and opponent-of-a-cause uses.

Bedeutungen 1–3 and examples
AUTHOR / EDITOR
Dudenredaktion
YEAR
2026
PUBLISHER
Cornelsen Verlag
02 / EDITORIAL STATE

THE CURRENT RECORD IS RESOLVED.

CONFIDENCE
established
STATUS
resolved
LEGACY SOURCE SUMMARY
The modern sense inventory is explicitly broader than one interpersonal relation.
RESOLUTION NOTE

The headword gloss and semantic journey retain the documented range.