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WIKTIONARY VIA KAIKKI / WIKTEXTRACT

Imported dictionary evidence

SOURCE-IMPORTED · UNREVIEWED

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 LOCAL

3 source sections across 2 headwords matching “Devil”. These are separate from the reviewed results below.

Open the permanent entry for Devil →Open the permanent entry for devil →

DevilEnglish (en) · Unnumbered etymologySource text

See devil.

Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗

devilEnglish (en) · Unnumbered etymologySource text

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *dwóh₁ ▲ Proto-Indo-European *trísinflu. Proto-Indo-European *dwísder. Ancient Greek διά (diá) Ancient Greek δια- (dia-) Proto-Indo-European *gʷelH-der. Proto-Hellenic *gʷəlnō Ancient Greek βάλλω (bállō) Ancient Greek διαβάλλω (diabállō) Ancient Greek διάβολος (diábolos)bor. Latin diabolusbor. Proto-West Germanic *diubul Old English dēofol Middle English devel English devil From Middle English devil, devel, deovel, from Old English dēofol, from Proto-West Germanic *diubul, from Latin diabolus, ultimately from Ancient Greek διάβολος (diábolos, “false accuser, slanderer”), also as "Satan" (in Jewish/Christian usage, translating Biblical Hebrew שָׂטָן (śātān)), from διαβάλλω (diabállō, “to slander”), literally “to throw across”, from διά (diá, “through, across”) + βάλλω (bállō, “throw”). The Old English word was probably adopted under influence of Latin diabolus (itself from the Greek). Other Germanic languages adopted the word independently: compare Saterland Frisian Düüwel (“devil”), West Frisian duvel (“devil”), Dutch duivel, duvel (“devil”), German Low German Düvel (“devil”), German Teufel (“devil”), Bavarian Teifl (“devil”), Danish djævel (“devil”), Swedish djävul (“devil”) (older: djefvul, Old Swedish diævul, Old Norse djǫfull). Doublet of diable, diablo, and diabolus.

Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗

devilEnglish (en) · Unnumbered etymologySource text

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

Browse the independently attributed sources →

45REVIEWED RESULTS

8WORD DOSSIERS

6HISTORICAL NODES

1SOURCES

18CLAIMS

12WITNESSES

MODERN ENTRY POINTS

WORD DOSSIERS

English nouncontrarian claim

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.

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Swedish common-gender noundossier summary

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.

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Danish common-gender noundossier summary

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.

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Old Norse masculine nouncontrarian claim

fjándi

Old Norse fjándi is a masculine noun whose inherited shape still exposes a prehistoric agent formation. Cleasby and Vigfússon compare Gothic fiands, Old English feond, German Feind, Swedish fiende, and Danish fjende, identify the nd as participial, and gloss the older formation as properly a hater. They then distinguish the ordinary enemy sense from a post-Christian fiend development. The University of Copenhagen Dictionary of Old Norse Prose supplies 222 citations and six semantic zones: enemy or opponent; devil, monster, or demon; evil spirit; pagan god; the Devil or Satan; and a derogatory term for a hated or bewitched person, animal, or object. Lexicon Poeticum independently exposes 49 poetic records, including source-reported tenth-century enemy uses and later Christian fiend uses, while warning that its concordance and dates require checking. The noun therefore does not possess one timeless true meaning: an inherited lexicalized hater became an ordinary enemy word, and the branch later accumulated several demonic and derogatory senses. The displayed pronunciation is an editorial normalized approximation, not recorded historical audio. No underlying manuscript object is claimed as directly inspected in this dossier.

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Old English strong masculine nd-agent nouncontrarian claim

fēond

An Old English enemy, foe, and Devil noun inherited from the Germanic lexicalized present-participial formation *fi(j)and-. OED’s revised 2026 entry treats fēond and fīond as dialectal Old English forms, documents i-mutated fīend and fȳnd inside the inherited nd-stem inflection, and traces the word through a highly variable Middle English record into modern fiend. Bosworth–Toller supplies the Old English paradigm and examples; the Middle English Dictionary independently reports 188 quotations across eight senses. Cotton MS Vitellius A XV folio 180v was directly inspected at Beowulf 2289, where feondes modifies fotlast, the foe’s footprint.

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Old High German strong masculine noundossier summary

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.

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Old Dutch masculine nounhistorical form

fīunt

Old Dutch fīunt is the normalized headword behind a twenty-six-occurrence historical-dictionary record for enemy or opponent. ONW classifies the noun as synchronically unsegmented but says it was originally the present participle of the verb corresponding to Old High German fīēn and Gothic fijan, a verb no longer known in Dutch. Its frequency table preserves six case-number cells: nominative and genitive singular plus nominative, genitive, dative, and accusative plural. Those are not a complete paradigm. The article displays twenty representative location blocks after warning that locations in the semantic profile have been reduced. Most early Wachtendonck Psalms material is linguistically dated 901–1000 but survives in copies dated 1595–1605, circa 1598, or 1701–1800; no tenth-century manuscript object was inspected. One dfiunt or fiunt gloss aligned with Latin diabolus is textually disputed, and one Groningen psalm gloss is explicitly assigned to Old Frisian by the dictionary. This dossier therefore treats fīunt as a nominal fossil with a partially preserved inflectional record, not as a productive Old Dutch participle or a complete transparent paradigm.

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Dutch masculine nouncontrarian claim

vijand

The ordinary Dutch noun for an enemy or opponent descends through Middle Dutch viant or vient and Old Dutch fīunt or fīant from a Germanic present-participial formation: literally the hating one. ONW counts twenty-six Old Dutch records and says the corresponding hate verb is no longer known in Dutch; VMNW counts 407 thirteenth-century records across enemy, Devil, and monster senses. Several Dutch etymologists propose that the medieval use for the Devil helped preserve the word’s full ending, unlike vriend, but they mark that explanation as possible or probable rather than demonstrated. The earliest Old Dutch Devil reading is itself textually disputed, and the Wachtendonck Psalms witnesses are later copies, not directly inspected tenth-century objects.

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ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY

HISTORICAL FORMS

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Old Swedish / Indo-European

fiande / fiände

enemy or opponent; also the Devil in recorded medieval use

DATE: Old Swedish; recorded from the beginning of the 1300s
MATCH: gloss
DOSSIERS: 1

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Old Norse / Indo-European

fjándi

enemy or opponent; devil, demon, evil spirit, pagan god, Satan, or a derogatory hated being or thing

DATE: Old Norse poetic and prose record
MATCH: gloss
DOSSIERS: 1

●

Old English / Indo-European

fēond

enemy, foe, devil; masculine noun

DATE: Old English lexical record
MATCH: gloss
DOSSIERS: 2

●

Old Dutch / Indo-European

fīunt

enemy or opponent; one disputed gloss may denote the Devil

DATE: Old Dutch; oldest corpus range 901–1000, later records through 1200
MATCH: gloss
DOSSIERS: 1

●

Old Dutch / Indo-European

fīunt / fīant

enemy or opponent; one disputed record may denote the Devil

DATE: Old Dutch
MATCH: gloss
DOSSIERS: 2

●

Middle Dutch / Indo-European

viant / vient

enemy or opponent; also the Devil, an evil spirit, or a monster in recorded contexts

DATE: Middle Dutch
MATCH: gloss
DOSSIERS: 1

WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED

CLAIMS & DISPUTES

SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 12

openspeculativeposition text

Can one coinage event be named for enemy becoming the Devil?

No unique event is established. OED explains a recurring ultimate-enemy use shaped by Latin hostis and the adversary meaning behind satan, but does not identify one inventor or first metaphorical moment.

1 CITATIONS / AUDIT ↗fiend DOSSIER ↗

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.

1 CITATIONS / AUDIT ↗fīant DOSSIER ↗

openproposedposition text

Does dfiunt or fiunt securely name the Devil?

No. ONW reports that most editions read fiunt, Heyne proposed an error for diufil, both can render Latin diabolus, and the initial D has competing analyses.

1 CITATIONS / AUDIT ↗fīunt DOSSIER ↗

openproposedposition text

Does Dfiunt / fiunt securely name the Devil in the earliest Old Dutch record?

No. ONW reports that most editions read fiunt, Heyne proposed an error for diufil, both can render Latin diabolus, and the initial D has competing analyses.

1 CITATIONS / AUDIT ↗vijand DOSSIER ↗

openproposedposition text

Did the Devil preserve vijand’s full ending?

Possibly, not certainly. Van Veen, De Vries, Van Haeringen, and EWN repeat variants of the proposal that medieval Devil usage made vijand a church or consecrated term whose full ending resisted the reduction seen in vriend. Their wording is maybe or probably.

3 CITATIONS / AUDIT ↗vijand DOSSIER ↗