CLAIM / COUNTERCLAIM / LIMITRECORD 487
DISPUTE
RECORD.
One scholarly question. Every attached source. The present editorial state, without pretending the last word has been written.
resolvedestablished
Was German Hass borrowed from English hate?
No borrowing is established. German Hass continues Old High German haʒ; English hate continues an Old English noun-and-verb history. The branches meet at reconstructed Germanic material.
WORD UNDER REVIEWDISPUTE 487
Hass
/has/ · German masculine noun
The modern German noun for intense aversion, rejection, or hostility toward a person, group, or institution. Duden traces Middle and Old High German haʒ to suffering, sorrow, and resentment and records the 1996 spelling change from Haß to Hass. DWDS/Pfeifer reports the Old High German noun from the eighth century and places it in the Germanic family of Old Saxon heti, Old English hete, Old Norse hatr, Gothic hatis, and related forms. Grimm’s DWB preserves a more complicated semantic record: hostile pursuit or action, anger expressed in deeds, ordinary hostile disposition, and even measured rivalry during friendly competition. The reviewed route reuses *hatiz- and the qualified *ḱh₂d-es- / *ḱeh₂d- comparison, then stops.
01DIRECT CLAIM EVIDENCE
2 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 01supportsetymological dictionary
DWDS — Hass, etymology after Wolfgang Pfeifer
Shows collateral inheritance rather than borrowing.
Pfeifer etymology: German, Old English, English, Dutch, Norse, Swedish, and Gothic forms- AUTHOR / EDITOR
- Wolfgang Pfeifer · DWDS editorial team
- YEAR
- 2026
- PUBLISHER
- Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences
SOURCE 02contexthistorical dictionary
Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm — hasz, m.
Independently lists the cross-Germanic cognate set.
hasz, m., opening comparative paragraph- AUTHOR / EDITOR
- Jacob Grimm · Wilhelm Grimm · DWDS editorial team
- YEAR
- 2026
- PUBLISHER
- Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences
02 / EDITORIAL STATE
THE CURRENT RECORD IS RESOLVED.
- CONFIDENCE
- established
- STATUS
- resolved
- LEGACY SOURCE SUMMARY
- DWDS and DWB list collateral inherited forms across Germanic.
RESOLUTION NOTEThe canonical graph joins the words at shared reconstruction and draws no English-to-German arrow.