SEARCH THE GRAPH.

baseEnglish (en) · Etymology 1Source text

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *gʷem- Proto-Indo-European *-tis Proto-Indo-European *gʷémtis Proto-Hellenic *gʷə́tis Ancient Greek βᾰ́σῐς (bắsĭs)bor. Latin basis Old French basebor. Middle English base English base From Middle English base, bas, baas, from Old French base, from Latin basis, from Ancient Greek βάσις (básis). Doublet of basis and bass.

baseEnglish (en) · Etymology 2Source text

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *gʷem- Proto-Indo-European *-tis Proto-Indo-European *gʷémtis Proto-Hellenic *gʷə́tis Ancient Greek βάσις (básis)bor.? Ancient Greek βαθύς (bathús)bor.? Oscanbor.? Celticbor.? Late Latin bassus Old French basbor. Middle English bas English base From Middle English base, bas, from Old French bas, from Late Latin bassus (“low”). Cognate with Spanish bajo, Italian basso and base.

baseEnglish (en) · Etymology 3Source text

Probably a specific use of Etymology 1, above; perhaps also a development of the plural of bar.

baseEnglish (en) · Etymology 4Source text

Variant forms.

Browse the independently attributed sources →

INDEPENDENT SOURCE LIBRARY

More sources for this spelling

These are spelling matches, not a claim of identical senses or agreement. Historical accounts retain their own editions and limits; none is automatically promoted into reviewed ancestry.

Chambers (1908)

1908

52REVIEWED RESULTS

12WORD DOSSIERS

12HISTORICAL NODES

3SOURCES

24CLAIMS

1WITNESSES

MODERN ENTRY POINTS

WORD DOSSIERS

German masculine nounhistorical form

Feind

The modern German noun for a personal, political, military, or ideological enemy or opponent. Duden derives it through Middle High German vīnt or vīant and Old High German fīand, literally the hating one; DWDS dates Old High German fīant and fījant to the eighth century and identifies the Germanic ancestor as a petrified substantivized present participle. Grimm’s dictionary independently compares Gothic fijands, Old English fēond, English fiend, Dutch vijand, and Nordic forms, while warning that its own still-deeper foam hypothesis required confirmation. The reviewed route therefore follows the inherited enemy noun to reconstructed *fi(j)and- and *fi(j)ēn-, then treats *peh₁- as proposed and stops.

German masculine nouncontrarian claim

Freund

German Freund continues Middle High German vriunt and Old High German friunt. DWDS/Pfeifer, Duden, and Grimm independently analyze the inherited Germanic formation as a substantivized present participle of the verb represented by Gothic frijōn and Old English frēogan: historically a loving or favorably disposed one. The record is semantically wider than a modern close companion: the historical dictionaries also document neighbor, relative, lover, ally, supporter, patron, address, and euphemistic uses. The graph joins the High German line to the same reviewed *frijōnd- and *frī- nodes as English friend, keeps *prī- proposed, and stops.

German masculine nounhistorical form

Hass

The modern German noun for intense aversion, rejection, or hostility toward a person, group, or institution. Duden traces Middle and Old High German haʒ to suffering, sorrow, and resentment and records the 1996 spelling change from Haß to Hass. DWDS/Pfeifer reports the Old High German noun from the eighth century and places it in the Germanic family of Old Saxon heti, Old English hete, Old Norse hatr, Gothic hatis, and related forms. Grimm’s DWB preserves a more complicated semantic record: hostile pursuit or action, anger expressed in deeds, ordinary hostile disposition, and even measured rivalry during friendly competition. The reviewed route reuses *hatiz- and the qualified *ḱh₂d-es- / *ḱeh₂d- comparison, then stops.

Middle Irish nounhistorical form

cais

eDIL separates two Irish headwords written cais. The first, also recorded as caise, is explicitly explained both as love and as hate; its cited passages and glossary equations range from searc and grádh "love" to miscais and mioscais "hatred", with context deciding individual readings. One Éigse line is tentatively translated so that the same visible form occurs on both sides: "my love ... is met by hatred(?)". The question mark matters. The second eDIL headword cais means "eye" and is excluded from this semantic lineage. These records establish a remarkable lexicographic opposition, not one timeless essence, a chronology from love to hate, or proof that every occurrence belongs to one historically indivisible sense. John T. Koch compares the noun with Proto-Celtic *katsi- < *kad-t/si- and a wider *kad- family, but that ancestry and its proposed Germanic comparison remain open. eDIL itself generally supplies etymologies only selectively. No manuscript pixels were directly inspected, no earliest-use or historical-frequency claim is made, and no exact pronunciation is invented.

adjective · noundossier summary

decimal

Based on ten or tenths; borrowed through French and Medieval Latin from the Latin family of decem, “ten.”

adjectivedossier summary

etymological

Of, relating to, or based on etymology; an Early Modern English adjective whose exact formation is described differently by major historical dictionaries.

noundossier summary

etymon

A technical English noun for an earlier source form, a foreign donor, or a base used in composition or derivation.

English nounhistorical form

fiend

An inherited English noun whose earliest recorded sense was enemy or foe, not demon. Old English fēond belonged to a Germanic lexicalized one-who-hates formation; Middle English fẹ̄nd preserved enemy, Satan, demon, possession, and monster senses across extensive spelling variation; modern fiend continues the same English line. OED’s revised 2026 entry marks the literal enemy sense obsolete after the medieval record, explains the Devil as the ultimate Enemy, and documents long-versus-short vowel competition before the long vowel became dominant by the eighteenth century. The Middle English Dictionary independently exposes 188 quotations across eight senses without claiming a complete corpus.

Swedish common-gender nounhistorical form

fiende

The ordinary Swedish noun for an enemy, opponent, hostile state, or figurative threat continues Old Swedish fiande or fiände and an inherited Germanic present-participial formation: literally the hating one. Svenska Akademiens current dictionary calls the word Common Germanic and gives the original force hatande; SAOB and Hellquist independently derive the noun from the fi(j)- hate verb behind Gothic fijan and Old Norse fjá. Modern Swedish hata belongs to a separate Germanic hat- family, so fiende is not transparently built from the verb Swedish speakers now use for hate. Historical Swedish also used Fienden for the Devil, but that branch is not the word’s only or current central meaning. All medieval and early-modern examples here are source-reported lexical records, not directly inspected manuscript objects.

Gothic class-III weak-verb lemmahistorical form

fijan

A Gothic class-III weak verb conventionally glossed hate or detest. Project Wulfila currently exposes 42 candidate tokens under fijan: 13 verified, eight further lexically unambiguous, and 21 explicitly ambiguous with the masculine nd-stem noun fijands, enemy. The surface inventory contains fifteen written shapes, including one exact infinitive fijan in John 7:7 and four j-less forms. Ayora Estevan shows why the overlap cannot be normalized away: Proto-Germanic had already lexicalized *fi(j)and- as enemy, while Gothic still used the matching present-participial formation for one who hates.

Gothic masculine nd-stem common nounhistorical form

fijands

A Gothic masculine nd-stem noun conventionally glossed enemy. Project Wulfila currently exposes 26 candidates: three verified noun assignments, two further noun-only assignments, and 21 surface forms also listed under the living verb fijan. Ayora Estevan explains the collision diachronically: Proto-Germanic had already lexicalized the present-participial *fi(j)and- as enemy, while Gothic retained productive one-who-hates participles beside the noun. The five noun-only candidates use fiand, fijands, fijande, and fijandis; all five were inspected in Codex Argenteus facsimiles.

Danish common-gender nounhistorical form

fjende

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.

ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY

HISTORICAL FORMS

*kad-

a proposed base used in a wider Celtic, Germanic, Italic, Iranian, and Greek comparison

DATE: proposed Proto-Indo-European base
MATCH: gloss
DOSSIERS: 1

Proto-Turkic / Turkic

kad- / kad-ï

fir tree; reconstructed base proposed in the boat-word history

DATE: Proto-Turkic analysis
MATCH: gloss
DOSSIERS: 1

*peh₁-

a proposed base associated with harm, blame, suffering, or hate

DATE: proposed Proto-Indo-European base
MATCH: gloss
DOSSIERS: 14

*ǵhes-

take or give in exchange; hypothetical deeper base of *ghos-ti-

DATE: Proto-Indo-European prehistory
MATCH: gloss
DOSSIERS: 0

*ḱeh₂d-

a proposed base glossed with grief, pain, and hatred

DATE: proposed Proto-Indo-European base
MATCH: gloss
DOSSIERS: 19

Ancient Greek / Indo-European

-ίζειν

-ízein

do or practice the action of the base

DATE: Ancient Greek
MATCH: gloss
DOSSIERS: 0

Present-Day English / Indo-European

decimal

based on ten or tenths; a base-ten number

DATE: 1608–today
MATCH: gloss
DOSSIERS: 1

Present-Day English / Indo-European

etymological

of, relating to, or based on etymology

DATE: 1588–today
MATCH: gloss
DOSSIERS: 1

Present-Day English / Indo-European

etymon

an earlier source form, foreign donor, or derivational base

DATE: 1573–today
MATCH: gloss
DOSSIERS: 1

Middle English / Indo-European

hate

hate, extreme anger, hostility, or the lexical base of hatrede

DATE: Middle English
MATCH: gloss
DOSSIERS: 2

Middle English / Indo-European

humiliacioun

humbling, abasement, or humbled condition

DATE: late 14th-century Middle English record
MATCH: gloss
DOSSIERS: 1