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START / NODE 1173Old EnglishOld English written record
fēogan
An Old English verb meaning hate or persecute, recorded as FEÓGAN, feógean, fiógan, contracted feón and fión, with participle feógende and a broad present-and-past paradigm. Bosworth–Toller supplies examples whose objects include crimes, evil ways, law, peace, a temple, friends, and people. The verb continues reconstructed Proto-Germanic *fi(j)ēn-. Its active-participial formation lexicalized prehistorically as the enemy noun behind Old English fēond and modern fiend, but the verb, participle, and noun are not one interchangeable category.
“Old English had a native verb for hate whose fossilized one-who-hates formation survives as fiend. The verb and the enemy noun are family, not the same word.”OPEN COMPLETE WORD DOSSIER ↗
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01
PARENT ROUTES1 REVIEWED RELATIONSHIP
Old Englishfēogan
to hate or persecute
↑GO DEEPER
Proto-Germanic · Proto-Germanic reconstruction*fi(j)ēn-a reconstructed verb meaning hate or be hostile toward
*
RECONSTRUCTED, NOT DIRECTLY ATTESTED
- SOUND CHANGE
- Old English fēogan and contracted feón continue the Germanic fi(j)- verb with West Germanic vocalic, consonantal, and inflectional development; the exact prehistoric sequence behind every recorded variant remains reconstructed.
- SEMANTIC CHANGE
- The inherited Germanic hate or hostility verb remains a transitive verb meaning hate or persecute in Old English.
- SCHOLAR
- Joseph Bosworth · Thomas Northcote Toller · Guus Kroonen
- CONFIDENCE
- probable — Old English forms and cross-Germanic comparison support inheritance; the exact intermediate phonetic history is not directly attested.
- CHRONOLOGY
- Proto-Germanic reconstruction into the Old English written record.
3 CITATIONSEtymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic — *fi(j)ēn- and *fi(j)and-p. 140, *fi(j)ēn- and Germanic descendants Bosworth–Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary — FEÓGANGrammar, definition, examples, and Germanic comparison Bosworth–Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary — feón, to hateGrammar and sense: feón, he feóþ, past feóde; to hate AUDIT CANONICAL EDGE 1159 ↗
Publishes the reconstructed Germanic verb and Old English branch comparison.
ORIGINAL ↗Publishes the Old English paradigm, hate-or-persecute range, and Old High German, Gothic, and Icelandic comparisons.
ORIGINAL ↗Documents the contracted variant and its finite forms under a linked entry.
ORIGINAL ↗THE ASTERISK IS A PROMISE
RECONSTRUCTION IS
NOT INSCRIPTION.
Crossing into a starred form changes the evidence class. The interface marks that crossing, preserves confidence, and never manufactures the next root to make the picture look complete.