CLAIM / COUNTERCLAIM / LIMITRECORD 744
DISPUTE
RECORD.
One scholarly question. Every attached source. The present editorial state, without pretending the last word has been written.
openprobable
Is there one uncontested inherited stem-class analysis for the wider noun?
No. Fulk compares Old Saxon heti and Old English hete as i-stems and says Gothic hatis transferred to the a-stems; Pfeifer calls the wider noun an old es/os-stem.
WORD UNDER REVIEWDISPUTE 744
heti
not directly recoverable · Old Saxon masculine i-stem noun
Old Saxon heti is an attested noun, not a reconstructed Proto-Germanic form. Köbler prints the normalized citation form hėti* with a trailing asterisk, then gives three cited lexical loci whose inflections produce five witness readings: accusative singular heti at Heliand 1322 in manuscripts M, C, and V; dative singular heti at Genesis 60; and genitive singular hetias in the tenth-century Saxon Confession. No nominative singular appears in that inventory, but the exact surface heti is visibly written in Munich Cgm 25. The directly inspected Heliand line places the noun in the Beatitudes, where righteous people endure rîkioro manno heti endi harmquidi, powerful men's hostility or persecution and hostile speech. The Saxon Confession instead places hetias beside malice, envy, and slander among confessed wrongs. Those contexts establish a range broader than one private feeling without proving that persecution was the prehistoric root meaning. Fulk and Köbler analyze the Old Saxon comparison as an i-stem; Pfeifer describes the wider Germanic noun as an old es/os-stem, so the inherited morphological account remains public rather than falsely harmonized.
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 grammar
A Comparative Grammar of the Early Germanic Languages — Gothic hatis
Publishes one inherited morphology account.
p. 80, i-stem Old English hete and Old Saxon heti; Gothic transfer to a-stems- AUTHOR / EDITOR
- R. D. Fulk
- YEAR
- 2018
- PUBLISHER
- John Benjamins Publishing Company · Library of Congress
SOURCE 02challengesetymological dictionary
DWDS — Hass, etymology after Wolfgang Pfeifer
Publishes the competing wider-family description.
Pfeifer etymology: old es/os-stem- AUTHOR / EDITOR
- Wolfgang Pfeifer · DWDS editorial team
- YEAR
- 2026
- PUBLISHER
- Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences
02 / EDITORIAL STATE
THE QUESTION REMAINS OPEN.
- CONFIDENCE
- probable
- STATUS
- open
- LEGACY SOURCE SUMMARY
- The sources agree on the family but frame its prehistoric morphology differently.
WHY NO RESOLUTIONThe reviewed evidence does not yet warrant collapsing the competing or incomplete analyses into one secure answer.