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WIKTIONARY VIA KAIKKI / WIKTEXTRACT
Imported dictionary evidence
These are source reports, not reviewed *SET-U ancestry. A list of templates or numbered etymologies is not an ancestor chain. Scholarly disagreements remain in the original source text.
35,981 English word records · 45,491 etymology sections in this online subset
PARTIAL ENGLISH COVERAGE · FULL CORPUS REMAINS LOCAL4 source sections across 1 headword matching “Big”. These are separate from the reviewed results below.
bigEnglish (en) · Etymology 1Source text
Inherited from Northern Middle English big, bigge (“powerful, strong”), possibly from a dialect of Old Norse. Ultimately perhaps a derivative of Proto-Germanic *bugja- (“swollen up, thick”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰew-, *bu- (“to swell”), in which case big would be related to bogey, bugbear, and bug. Compare dialectal Norwegian bugge (“great man”), Low German Bögge, Boggelmann.
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗bigEnglish (en) · Etymology 1Source text
Inherited from Northern Middle English big, bigge (“powerful, strong”), possibly from a dialect of Old Norse. Ultimately perhaps a derivative of Proto-Germanic *bugja- (“swollen up, thick”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰew-, *bu- (“to swell”), in which case big would be related to bogey, bugbear, and bug. Compare dialectal Norwegian bugge (“great man”), Low German Bögge, Boggelmann.
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗bigEnglish (en) · Etymology 2Source text
From Middle English biggen, byggen, from Old Norse byggja, byggva (“to build, dwell in, inhabit”), a secondary form of Old Norse búa (“to dwell”), related to Old English būan (“to dwell”). Cognate with Danish bygge, Swedish bygga.
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗bigEnglish (en) · Etymology 3Source text
From Middle English byge, from Old Norse bygg (“barley, probably Hordeum vulgare, common barley”), from Proto-Germanic *bewwuz (“crop, barley”). Cognate with Old English bēow (“barley”).
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗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- BigEnglish · e-37683-2876
Big, big, adj. large or great: pregnant: great in air, mien, or spirit: loud: pompous, esp. 'to talk big,' 'look big.'—adjs. Big-bell′ied, having a big belly; pregnant (with); Big′gish, rather big.—ns. Big′ness, bulk, si
Read the full source record → - BigEnglish · e-37683-2877
Big, big, v.t. (Scot.) to build, to pile up.—n. Big′gin, anything built, a house. [Sc. byggja; A.S. búian.]
Read the full source record →
012
MODERN ENTRY POINTS
WORD DOSSIERS
Gothic class-III weak-verb lemmadossier summary
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.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗Old Saxon class-II weak verbdossier summary
hatōn
The normalized Old Saxon weak-verb lemma hatōn is supported by a four-locus dictionary inventory: Heliand 1451 writes infinitive hatan in manuscript M and haton in manuscript C; Heliand 4915 writes genitive-plural present-participial hatandiero in M and hettendero in C; manuscript C supplies preterite hatoda at Heliand 5423; and GlG supplies infinitive haton aligned with Latin odisse. Those are six witness readings at four cited loci, not six independent lexemes or four manuscripts. The first Munich infinitive and the Munich hatandiero locus were directly inspected. The category problem is deeper than spelling: Köbler also indexes the Heliand 4915 forms under the separate agent noun hėttiand, enemy. The record therefore exposes the exact point where a live participial form and a lexicalized enemy noun overlap. It does not prove that pursue was the root meaning, that every enemy hates, or that every indexed form belongs unambiguously to one synchronic category.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗020
ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY
HISTORICAL FORMS
No reviewed record in this collection contains “big.” Absence describes this graph, not all of linguistic scholarship.
0313
WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED
CLAIMS & DISPUTES
SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 11
openprobableposition text
Can the nd-ending alone distinguish enemy from one who hates?
No. Galatians 4:16 nominative fijands functions as the noun enemy, Romans 11:28 accusative fijandans is analyzed as a participle, and Romans 12:9 fiandans takes an accusative object. Twenty-one other corpus tokens remain explicitly lexically and morphosyntactically ambiguous.
openprobableposition text
Can the nd-ending alone distinguish enemy from one who hates?
No. The noun and productive participle share surface inflection. Case, complementation, agreement, and context resolve some passages, but Project Wulfila leaves 21 candidates lexically and morphosyntactically ambiguous.
openprobableposition text
Is Heliand 4915 unambiguously a productive present participle?
No. Köbler lists hatandiero or hettendero under the verb hatōn as present participial forms and also under hėttiand, a lexicalized agent noun meaning enemy.
openprobableposition text
Is Heliand 4915 unambiguously an enemy noun?
No. The separate hėttiand entry establishes the lexicalized noun analysis, while the verb entry retains the same readings as participial evidence. The surviving phrase alone does not erase the overlap.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Does the surviving corpus contain 42 secure verb tokens?
No. Project Wulfila exposes 42 candidates under fijan, but only 13 are verified, eight more are lexically unambiguous but unverified, and 21 are explicitly shared with the fijands noun inventory.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Does fijan map one-to-one to Greek miseō, hate?
No. Verbal contexts commonly translate Greek miseō, but the shared fijand- formation also corresponds to Greek echthros, enemy. Luke 1:71 and Luke 6:27 even reverse the constructional work done by fijan and hatan.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Do 26 candidates measure spoken Gothic frequency?
No. They measure a bounded fragmentary textual corpus with biblical translation effects, ambiguous lemma assignments, and duplicate manuscript witnesses.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Are fiiant, fîjant, fiunt, fient, fiand, fiund, and fiend separate ancestry branches?
Not in AWB's article. They are form, spelling, dialectal, and inflectional records inside one headword history, with a few individual corrupt or ambiguous tokens separately flagged.
resolvedprobableposition text
Is fiendi simply the same lexical item as the noun fīant?
Not in the reviewed grammar. AWB analyzes fiendi as the present participle of fîên, while fîant / fîjant is a separate strong masculine noun; one gloss alignment remains textually ambiguous.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Does the Phoenix hettende establish the first use of hettan?
No. It is one edited poetic occurrence of an ambiguous form. Without a complete witness comparison and direct manuscript inspection, it cannot establish the first token of the lemma.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Are lay and lie simply the same verb?
They are historically related but grammatically distinct inherited verbs: lay is transitive and causative, while lie is intransitive; lay is also the standard past tense of lie, which creates modern ambiguity.
CONTRARIAN TRUTHS / 2
RANK 32GRADE Aranked reveal
Enemy is a fossilized hater—but 21 Gothic tokens still refuse to choose.
Project Wulfila lists 42 candidates under fijan and 26 under the enemy noun fijands. Their intersection is exactly 21 surface tokens. Ayora Estevan explains the collision: *fi(j)and- had lexicalized as enemy before Gothic, while Gothic still possessed the productive present participle one who hates. Case and syntax resolve some passages; the remaining 21 stay public as noun-versus-participle ambiguity.
RANK 161GRADE Acontrarian claim
Verbal is bigger than spoken.
The form is built on Latin verbum “word, verb,” and English verbal still covers what consists of words, what relates to verbs, spoken communication, exact wording, and verbal aptitude.
041
BOOKS / DICTIONARIES / ARTICLES / DATABASES
SOURCES
050
FIRST USES & HISTORICAL OBJECTS
ATTESTATION WITNESSES
No reviewed record in this collection contains “big.” Absence describes this graph, not all of linguistic scholarship.
06
SEARCH IS DISCOVERY, NOT PROOF
EVERY RESULT OPENS A PERMANENT EVIDENCE RECORD.
Matching text only locates a record. It does not raise confidence, settle a dispute, establish cognacy, or turn a source report into direct inspection. Follow the result into its citations and editorial limits.