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THE GRAPH.
Find a modern word—or search sideways through reconstructed roots, historical forms, meanings, languages, scholars, sources, claims, disputes, and witnesses.
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 LOCALNo exact match for “Certain” in this partial English subset. That does not mean the full research corpus—or linguistic scholarship—has no record. Check the original dictionary entry ↗
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.
Browse the independently attributed sources →Certain
No extractable etymology was found for this exact spelling. Open the original dictionary entry ↗
Read the complete entry and references ↗ · Contribute a cited dossier
0112
MODERN ENTRY POINTS
WORD DOSSIERS
nouncontrarian claim
bayou
English bayou, recorded by 1763, came from Louisiana French bayouque. An early Choctaw *bayok is a plausible proposed source, but the historical form and its alleged contraction to modern bók are not securely attested.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗noun · verbdossier summary
boomerang
An Aboriginal Australian borrowing recorded in English by 1824. Dharug and Dharawal forms have been proposed, but the Australian National Dictionary Centre says the exact source language remains uncertain.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nouncontrarian claim
etymology
The study of the true or original sense of a word—and of the changes that made it what it is.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗Old High German weak verbdossier summary
fīēn
Old High German fīēn—printed fîên in the Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch—was a weak verb meaning to hate, not love, be hostile to, detest, or reject. The official dictionary says it is attested only in Alemannic manuscripts of the eighth and ninth centuries, then inventories an infinitive fien, present participle fiendi, second-person singular preterite fietos, and accusative plural masculine past participle fieta. Three rule-text records concern hating discipline, one’s own will, or no person; gloss records align the participial forms with Latin exosus or exosos; and an Esther gloss aligns fien with detestari. These are source-reported edition and dictionary records, not directly inspected manuscript objects, and the broad manuscript horizon does not identify one exact first token. A separate twelfth-century article printed fien [sic] with the gloss ubere is explicitly left uninterpreted by the dictionary and is not merged into this hate verb. Beside the verb, Old High German had the already lexicalized enemy noun fīant, whose old participial character could still shine through in fixed phrases. The graph therefore shows a living daughter verb beside a grammatical fossil without pretending that either attested form is the reconstructed Proto-Germanic word itself. No historical sound recording exists and the dossier does not display a fabricated phonetic certainty.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗German weak verbcontrarian claim
hassen
The modern German weak verb for feeling hatred toward a person or for strongly disliking a thing or action. Duden traces it through Middle High German haʒʒen and Old High German haʒʒēn / haʒʒōn and adds that the older verb also meant pursue. Grimm’s DWB makes the semantic contrast explicit: it calls hostile pursuit or persecution the original sense and then describes a later, more muted center in hostile disposition rather than hostile deeds. BMZ and Lexer independently document the Middle High German verb and its literary record. The reviewed ancestry follows the reconstructed Germanic weak-verb alternatives into the *hatiz- family, preserves the qualified *ḱh₂d-es- / *ḱeh₂d- proposal, and then stops.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗Old Norse noun, chiefly neuterhistorical form
hatr
An Old Norse noun for hatred, enmity, or spite. The University of Copenhagen Dictionary of Old Norse Prose gives the main neuter entry 54 citations, while a separately analyzed masculine entry has only one citation and is flagged as possibly an elementary error. The neuter corpus also contains one cautiously proposed mockery or scorn sense aligned with Latin irrisio. A c.1150-1200 manuscript visibly preserves Hatr in a line ONP transcribes Hatr hafa þeir engla and aligns with Latin Odium. The reviewed ancestry joins the Germanic *hatiz- family, preserves the disputed *ḱh₂d-es- and *ḱeh₂d- comparison, and then stops.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nouncontrarian claim
hatred
A Middle English formation built from hate plus the fossilized native condition suffix -rede / -reden, with a secure Germanic hate family but a semantically difficult and explicitly disputed deeper Indo-European proposal.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nouncontrarian claim
icon
An image, likeness, representative figure, or display symbol, borrowed through Late Latin from Greek eikōn.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗noun · verbcontrarian claim
law
A binding rule, body of rules, or regular principle; a Scandinavian loan in Old English whose deepest secure family means lie or lay.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nouncontrarian claim
science
Systematic knowledge today; inherited through French from Latin scientia, a much broader word for knowledge, awareness, and understanding.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗adjectivedossier summary
sincere
Genuine, honest, and free from pretense; borrowed from a Latin adjective of uncertain origin.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nounhistorical form
tipi
One spelling in the English tepee–teepee–tipi family, borrowed from Dakota thípi and built on a Siouan dwelling root.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗024
ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY
HISTORICAL FORMS
*
Proto-Indo-European / Indo-European
*stéu-gho-
real; certain
- DATE
- Proto-Indo-European Armenian preform, proposed
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Old Norse / Indo-European
hatr
hatred, enmity, spite; perhaps mockery or scorn in one uncertain context
- DATE
- Old Norse textual record
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Present-Day English / Indo-European
tipi
a conical portable dwelling of certain Great Plains peoples
- DATE
- 1743–today
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Armenian / Indo-European
ստոյգ
stoygtrue, just, certain, sure, real, authentic
- DATE
- Classical Armenian record–later Armenian
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
0321
WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED
CLAIMS & DISPUTES
SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 12
openproposedposition text
Which Aboriginal language supplied boomerang?
Dharug bumarin and a Dharawal bou-mar-rang form are published candidates, but the Australian National Dictionary Centre says the exact source language remains uncertain.
openproposedposition text
Does the Éigse line certainly use cais once for love and once for hatred?
Not certainly. eDIL tentatively translates "mo chais is cais 'na agaid" as "my love ... is met by hatred(?)" and prints a question mark on the second reading.
openboundaryposition text
Can icon be securely reconstructed beyond Greek eikōn?
Not from the reviewed evidence. Merriam-Webster calls the proposed deeper base uncertain and a Lithuanian comparison doubtful; Etymonline likewise stops at uncertain Greek prehistory.
openproposedposition text
Is *set-u- certain?
No. It is a serious published reconstruction, but the exact morphology and wider family are analyzed differently by scholars.
openprobableposition text
Is Habakkuk-gloss dfiunt a secure Devil token?
No. AWB says the d likely begins diuuil and treats dfiunt as probably corrupt; the Epinal form dfiant does not remove the uncertainty.
openproposedposition text
Does girl have a securely known Old English ancestor?
No. American Heritage labels the origin unknown; the Middle English Dictionary marks *gyrela and a gierela garment comparison as uncertain.
openproposedposition text
Is hostile pursuit the securely recovered original meaning?
Not beyond dispute. DWB calls it original and Duden independently notes pursue, but the surviving examples, the exact weak-verb reconstruction, and the deeper comparison do not recover one prehistoric scene with certainty.
openprobableposition text
How secure is the remote hospes compound?
Hospital’s path to Latin hospitāle and hospes is secure; the further reduction of hospes from *ghos-pot- remains probable rather than certain.
openboundaryposition text
Can Greek eikōn be securely reconstructed further?
Not from the reviewed evidence. Merriam-Webster calls the proposed base uncertain and the Lithuanian comparison doubtful; Etymonline likewise marks the Greek prehistory uncertain.
openproposedposition text
Can Latin lēx and Germanic law converge at *legh-?
Possibly, but uncertain. American Heritage presents Latin lēx from *leǵ- as one analysis and separately allows a possible “laid down” route from *legh-.
openprobableposition text
Is Malayalam the certain ultimate source of mango?
Portuguese manga is the secure immediate source; Malayalam māṅṅa is probable, not absolute, and no deeper Dravidian reconstruction is promoted in this review.
openprobableposition text
Does persōna securely mean a mask through which sound passes?
No secure reviewed etymology derives it as Latin per plus sonāre. The historical sources instead report a probable Etruscan connection and treat the origin as difficult.
CONTRARIAN TRUTHS / 9
RANK 6GRADE Aranked reveal
Evidence became a thread you could follow.
Old English cliewen was a ball of thread; the labyrinth metaphor turned it into guidance through uncertainty.
RANK 8GRADE Aranked reveal
Etymology calls itself the “true account.”
Greek ἔτυμος “true, real” joined -λογία “account or study”; even that truth-word reaches a reconstructed root.
RANK 33GRADE Aranked reveal
Enemy is a fossilized hater—but lexicalization does not make every token transparent.
Project Wulfila lists 26 candidates under the Gothic enemy noun and 42 under the verb fijan; exactly 21 surface tokens belong to both inventories. Ayora Estevan explains why: Proto-Germanic had already lexicalized one who hates as enemy, while Gothic retained the productive participle. The five noun-only tokens are directly inspected; the 21-token overlap remains public instead of being counted twice as certainty.
RANK 60GRADE A-ranked reveal
German hassen has an action buried under the feeling.
Duden says Middle High German haʒʒen and Old High German haʒʒēn / haʒʒōn formerly also meant pursue. Grimm’s DWB goes further: it calls hostile pursuit or persecution the original sense, reports Old High German following or pursuit alignments and Behaim persecution contexts, then explicitly describes the later sense as more about hostile disposition than hostile deeds. Modern Duden centers hatred and strong aversion. The contrast is real; the one certain prehistoric scene is not.
RANK 117GRADE Aranked reveal
A person was a mask and role before the modern individual.
Latin persōna carries mask, role, and character senses; a probable Etruscan phersu connection and proposed Greek route remain visibly uncertain.
RANK 121GRADE Aranked reveal
Wife once meant woman more broadly.
Old English wīf meant woman or wife and survives inside wīfman, the ancestor of woman; its deeper source remains uncertain.
RANK 153GRADE Aranked reveal
Trust is confidence made firm.
The likely Scandinavian noun belongs to a Germanic family of firmness and faith. Its exact Old Norse donor remains probable rather than certain.
RANK 183GRADE A−ranked reveal
Law and legal are semantic twins, not direct relatives.
Law comes from Scandinavian “what is laid down”; legal comes from Latin lēx. Only a possible, explicitly uncertain prehistoric route may reconnect them.
RANK 204GRADE A−contrarian claim
The honest root of icon ends in uncertainty.
Icon securely reaches Greek eikōn “image, likeness.” A proposed deeper comparison is doubtful, so the most revealing answer is the boundary itself.
040
BOOKS / DICTIONARIES / ARTICLES / DATABASES
SOURCES
No reviewed record in this collection contains “certain.” Absence describes this graph, not all of linguistic scholarship.
051
FIRST USES & HISTORICAL OBJECTS
ATTESTATION WITNESSES
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.