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fīant

Old High German fīant—written fîant and fîjant in the Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch's length-marking convention—was already a strong masculine noun meaning enemy, opponent, or adversary. The dictionary documents personal, public and military, spiritual, and specifically Devil senses across a large variant and inflectional record. Its most revealing evidence is grammatical: in fixed formulas, usually without an article, the old participial character could still shine through. Fîant uuesan could mean to be hostile, hate someone, or wish someone ill; fîant mahhôn meant make hostile, and zi fîante tuon could mean regard as an enemy or hate. The companion fîên article independently preserves the live weak verb to hate in eighth- and ninth-century Alemannic manuscripts. The noun therefore shows a lexical fossil whose older verbal force remained locally legible without ceasing to be a noun. The displayed pronunciation is an editorial normalized approximation, not a recorded historical audio object. All displayed Old High German passages are inspected dictionary or text-edition records, not directly inspected manuscript objects.

“Old High German fīant was already a noun—but in fixed phrases its old participial character could still shine through. The fossil had not gone dark.”