CLAIM / COUNTERCLAIM / LIMITRECORD 567
DISPUTE
RECORD.
One scholarly question. Every attached source. The present editorial state, without pretending the last word has been written.
resolvedprobable
Was fjándi borrowed from English fiend or German Feind?
No. The words are collateral inherited continuations of the Proto-Germanic lexicalized enemy formation.
WORD UNDER REVIEWDISPUTE 567
fjándi
approx. /ˈfjɑːndi/ · Old Norse masculine noun
Old Norse fjándi is a masculine noun whose inherited shape still exposes a prehistoric agent formation. Cleasby and Vigfússon compare Gothic fiands, Old English feond, German Feind, Swedish fiende, and Danish fjende, identify the nd as participial, and gloss the older formation as properly a hater. They then distinguish the ordinary enemy sense from a post-Christian fiend development. The University of Copenhagen Dictionary of Old Norse Prose supplies 222 citations and six semantic zones: enemy or opponent; devil, monster, or demon; evil spirit; pagan god; the Devil or Satan; and a derogatory term for a hated or bewitched person, animal, or object. Lexicon Poeticum independently exposes 49 poetic records, including source-reported tenth-century enemy uses and later Christian fiend uses, while warning that its concordance and dates require checking. The noun therefore does not possess one timeless true meaning: an inherited lexicalized hater became an ordinary enemy word, and the branch later accumulated several demonic and derogatory senses. The displayed pronunciation is an editorial normalized approximation, not recorded historical audio. No underlying manuscript object is claimed as directly inspected in this dossier.
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 01supportshistorical dictionary
An Icelandic-English Dictionary — fjándi
Publishes the collateral cognate set.
Gothic, Old English, German, Swedish, and Danish comparative header- AUTHOR / EDITOR
- Richard Cleasby · Guðbrandur Vigfússon
- YEAR
- 1874
- PUBLISHER
- Clarendon Press · old-norse.net digital edition
SOURCE 02supportsetymological dictionary
Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic — *fi(j)ēn- and *fi(j)and-
Places the forms under shared ancestry.
p. 140, reconstructed parent and daughter forms- AUTHOR / EDITOR
- Guus Kroonen
- YEAR
- 2013
- PUBLISHER
- Brill
02 / EDITORIAL STATE
THE CURRENT RECORD IS RESOLVED.
- CONFIDENCE
- probable
- STATUS
- resolved
- LEGACY SOURCE SUMMARY
- Cleasby and Vigfússon, Kroonen, and Ayora Estevan publish the cross-branch set.
RESOLUTION NOTEThe graph joins the words at *fi(j)and- and draws no daughter-to-daughter donor arrow.