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START / NODE 1122Old EnglishOld English
hettan
An Old English weak-verb lemma supported by a strikingly narrow surface record. A full-corpus lemmatisation inventory lists only hettende under hettan; Bosworth–Toller redirects the bare headword to hettend, “enemy,” while Orel compares the verb with Gothic hatjan and Middle High German hetzen. Clark Hall instead assigns hettende to hatian. The dossier therefore separates the comparative verb, the recorded enemy word, and the unresolved lemma assignment.
“The clearest surviving shape of this verb is an enemy: hettend(e). The located corpus inventory supplies only hettende under hettan, while the historical dictionary records that same family of forms repeatedly as the noun “enemy.””OPEN COMPLETE WORD DOSSIER ↗
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01
PARENT ROUTES1 REVIEWED RELATIONSHIP
Old Englishhettan
a lexicographic weak-verb lemma associated with hating, attacking, or persecuting
↑GO DEEPER
Proto-Germanic · Proto-Germanic*xatjanana reconstructed Germanic weak verb represented by Gothic hatjan, Old English hettan, and Middle High German hetzen
*
RECONSTRUCTED, NOT DIRECTLY ATTESTED
- SOUND CHANGE
- The j-conditioned Germanic stem accounts for Old English fronting of a to e and the geminate spelling in hettan; the displayed infinitive is a normalized lemma rather than a quoted corpus token.
- SEMANTIC CHANGE
- The compared Germanic verb family ranges across hate, pursuit, attack, and persecution, but the priority of those senses is unresolved.
- SCHOLAR
- Vladimir Orel · Chr. Peeters · Marta Tío Sáenz
- CONFIDENCE
- probable — The formal Germanic comparison is strong, but the located Old English verbal inventory supplies only hettende and dictionaries disagree on its lemma assignment.
- CHRONOLOGY
- Proto-Germanic reconstruction into Old English lexical and textual evidence.
4 CITATIONSA Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary — hete and related entrieshettende, present participle of hatian A Handbook of Germanic Etymology — *xataz, *xatjanan, and *xatōjananp. 203, *xatjanan: Gothic hatjan, Old English hettan, Middle High German hetzen HETTAN; HETTEND — An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Dictionary HHETTAN cross-reference and HETTEND entry The Lemmatisation of Old English Weak Verbs on a Relational Databasep. 255, hettan: hettende AUDIT CANONICAL EDGE 1114 ↗
Assigns the same surface form to the sibling lemma hatian rather than hettan.
ORIGINAL ↗Publishes the comparative weak verb and the three branch forms.
ORIGINAL ↗Recognizes the lemma while routing the surviving forms through the enemy entry.
ORIGINAL ↗The full-corpus lemmatisation inventory assigns the one located form to hettan.
ORIGINAL ↗THE ASTERISK IS A PROMISE
RECONSTRUCTION IS
NOT INSCRIPTION.
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