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
PERMANENT DISPUTE RECORD
ALL DISPUTES ↗One scholarly question. Every attached source. The present editorial state, without pretending the last word has been written.
No. Duden also records hostile powers, enemy soldiers or troops, threats to a group, figurative natural enemies, and opponents of practices or causes.
/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.
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.
Documents personal, group-threatening, military, and opponent-of-a-cause uses.
Bedeutungen 1–3 and examplesThe headword gloss and semantic journey retain the documented range.