Ordbog over det danske Sprog — Fjende
Structures Devil as a bounded branch.
General sense 1 before special religious use- AUTHOR / EDITOR
- ODS editorial team
- YEAR
- 1922
- PUBLISHER
- Det Danske Sprog- og Litteraturselskab
PERMANENT DISPUTE RECORD
ALL DISPUTES ↗One scholarly question. Every attached source. The present editorial state, without pretending the last word has been written.
No source inspected establishes that. Old Danish is glossed simply enemy, and the historical dictionaries present Devil as a special development inside the broader enemy field.
[ˈfjenə] or [ˈfjεnə] · Danish common-gender noun
Modern Danish fjende is the ordinary noun for a person, state, force, ideological opponent, or figurative thing that harms something else. Den Danske Ordbog derives it from Old Norse fjándi, compares German Feind, and identifies the older formation as a present participle of a verb corresponding to Old Norse fjá, to hate or persecute. Gammeldansk Ordbog records fiende broadly from 1100–1300. Ordbog over det danske Sprog preserves fiende, finde, and related spellings, an ordinary enemy sense, military and animal uses, abstract threats, and a special religious Devil branch. Holbergordbog shows that Fiende could still scan as either three syllables or two, alongside Fiænde, Finde, Fînde, and clipped Fiend. The word is therefore a grammatical fossil, not a current psychological definition: a lexicalized one-who-hates became the ordinary Danish enemy noun and accumulated broad contextual work. The current pronunciations are dictionary records, not retrojections into medieval Danish. No manuscript or print object is claimed as directly inspected.
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.
Structures Devil as a bounded branch.
General sense 1 before special religious usePreserves the general Old Danish category.
Headword fiende, gloss fjendeThe graph separates inherited formation from later contextual specialization.