GRAPH-WIDE SEARCH
MEASURE THE GRAPH ↗NOT JUST A DICTIONARY LOOKUP
6 EVIDENCE COLLECTIONSSEARCH
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 LOCAL2 source sections across 1 headword matching “Early”. These are separate from the reviewed results below.
earlyEnglish (en) · Etymology 1Source text
From Middle English erly, erlich, earlich, from Old English ǣrlīċ (“early”, adjective), equivalent to ere + -ly.
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗earlyEnglish (en) · Etymology 2Source text
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₂ey- Proto-Indo-European *-eri Proto-Indo-European *h₂éyeri Proto-Germanic *airi Proto-Germanic *airiz Old English ǣr Proto-Indo-European *leyg-der. Proto-Germanic *līkąder. Proto-Germanic *-līkaz Proto-Germanic *-ê Proto-Germanic *-līkê Proto-West Germanic *-līkē Old English -līċe Old English ǣrlīċe Middle English erly English early From Middle English erly, orely, arely, erliche, arliche, from Old English ǣrlīċe, ārlīċe (“early; early in the morning”, adverb), equivalent to ere + -ly. Cognate with Old Norse árliga, árla ( > Danish årle, Swedish arla, Norwegian årle, Faroese árla).
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.
Browse the independently attributed sources →0112
MODERN ENTRY POINTS
WORD DOSSIERS
noundossier summary
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 ↗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.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nouncontrarian claim
etymologist
A specialist in etymology; an English agent noun formed on etymology with -ist.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗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.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗Old Norse verbdossier summary
fjá
Old Norse fjá was a verb meaning to hate. The Dictionary of Old Norse Prose classifies it as poetic and exposes zero prose citations; its glossarium links point to the early form fía and the reconstructed Proto-Germanic *fi(j)ēn-. Cleasby and Vigfússon call the verb obsolete, compare Gothic fijan and Old English feon or fjan, and locate it in Hýmiskviða 22 and Lokasenna 35, with the reflexive fjásk in Skírnismál 33. Fritzner independently gives the same three locations. The normalized verse texts preserve three different grammatical surfaces: goð fjá in Hýmiskviða, mangi fíár in Lokasenna, and Freyr fiásk in Skírnismál. Lexicon Poeticum likewise reports three poetic records, but explicitly warns that its concordance is unreviewed and that dates should be checked. These are source-reported lexical and edited-text records, not directly inspected manuscript objects, and three records in the reviewed poetic concordance are not a census of every Old Norse utterance. The finite verb became a tiny poetic fossil while its inherited participial relative fjándi became the ordinary enemy noun and accumulated 222 citations in ONP's prose corpus. Those corpus totals are not directly frequency-comparable, but the contrast makes the grammatical survival visible. The generated possible runic inscription shown by modern dictionary transcriptions is not historical evidence and is excluded. No historical sound recording exists, so the dossier does not fabricate one exact pronunciation.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗Old Dutch masculine noundossier summary
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.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗German weak verbcontrarian claim
hetzen
A German weak verb whose modern senses range from driving or hunting quarry, through hurrying, to inciting hostility. The medieval record centers on setting dogs after game and already extends the action to turning people against one another. Comparative sources connect the verb with Old English hettan and Gothic hatjan, but the Old High German bridge and the exact prehistoric formation remain editorially disputed.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗adjectivehistorical form
hostile
Enemy-like or antagonistic, borrowed through French and Latin from hostīlis, built on Latin hostis “stranger; enemy.”
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nounhistorical form
hostis
The Latin word for an outsider or public enemy, preserving the historical semantic turn from foreign stranger to armed opponent.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗adjectivedossier summary
nice
Pleasant, kind, or precise today; a fourteenth-century borrowing whose early senses included foolish, simple, wanton, and fastidious.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗noundossier summary
qajaq
The Greenlandic word for a kayak, part of an Inuit and Proto-Eskimo word family whose history is independent of the nearly identical Turkish boat word kayık.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nouncontrarian claim
sauna
The English name of a Finnish steam bath, borrowed from Finnish sauna; its deeper Finnic history is secure enough to reconstruct, while a proposed ancient Germanic source remains actively qualified.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗028
ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY
HISTORICAL FORMS
*
Choctaw / Muskogean
*bayok
proposed early Choctaw form for a bayou or watercourse
- DATE
- proposed early Choctaw
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Italian / early Italian / Indo-European
astro
star; celestial body
- DATE
- Italian
- MATCH
- language
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Italian / early Italian / Indo-European
disastro
calamity; unfavorable star
- DATE
- early modern Italian
- MATCH
- language
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Early New High German / Indo-European
hassen
to hate or strongly dislike
- DATE
- Early New High German textual record
- MATCH
- language
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Early New High German / Indo-European
hetzen / hessen / hittzen
hunt with dogs; drive; set people against one another
- DATE
- Early New High German
- MATCH
- language
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Latin / Indo-European
hostis
foreigner or stranger in early use; later enemy
- DATE
- Latin antiquity
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 2
Italian / early Italian / Indo-European
quaranta
forty
- DATE
- Italian
- MATCH
- language
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Italian / early Italian / Indo-European
quarantena
a period of forty days; isolation period
- DATE
- Italian / Venetian
- MATCH
- language
- DOSSIERS
- 1
0317
WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED
CLAIMS & DISPUTES
SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 12
openprobableposition text
Does the English record begin in the 13th or 14th century?
The reviewed reports differ. Etymonline gives an early-thirteenth-century algorism; Merriam-Webster gives a fourteenth-century first-known-use horizon.
openproposedposition text
Is Choctaw bayuk a securely attested source of bayou?
No. An early Choctaw *bayok is plausible and accepted in a major handbook, but later bayuk is not securely attested and contraction to bók was conjectural.
openprobableposition text
Did every early fīend- form arise from inherited i-mutation?
Not necessarily. OED notes that especially in early Mercian, some apparently mutated stems may instead have been re-formed after the present participle of fēon.
openprobableposition text
Did fía become fjá at one exactly recoverable moment?
No exact date or complete phonetic sequence is established. Zoëga calls fía the early form and ONP cross-references it, which supports a historical surface relation but not a point event.
openprobableposition text
Did every early fīend- form arise from inherited i-mutation?
Not necessarily. OED notes that especially in early Mercian, some apparently mutated stems may instead have been re-formed after the present participle of fēon.
openestablishedposition text
Is the c1200 homily token the earliest surviving use?
Not established. It is an early directly inspected object, but the review did not compare every manuscript witness, poetic attribution, variant, or dating claim.
openestablishedposition text
Is John 7:23 the first Gothic use of the verb?
Not established. The translation belongs to a fourth-century tradition, the surviving codex is early sixth century, and no complete lost-text or spoken-language archive exists.
openprobableposition text
How does hatizōn relate to Gothic hatjan and hatan?
The reviewed sources distinguish class-II hatizōn, class-I hatjan, and class-III hatan. Hatis clearly supports two denominatives, while the precise historical relationship among all three verb systems remains disputed.
openprobableposition text
What is the earliest secure English humiliation witness?
Merriam-Webster publishes the Middle English form humiliacioun, and Harvard’s Chaucer corpus indexes one occurrence. This review did not inspect an underlying manuscript, prove an exact composition year, or establish that no earlier English occurrence survives.
openproposedposition text
Is poncho securely Mapuche or Spanish?
It remains disputed. A major English dictionary and Sánchez support Mapuche ancestry; current RAE and Iwasaki advance a Spanish-internal analysis grounded partly in an early 1530 record.
openprobableposition text
Can the relative sense be proved older than the friend sense?
No. The early records and comparative languages show both social fields, but the reviewed sources do not recover a single semantic priority event.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Why does the twelfth month mean tenth?
The Latin name belongs to an early Roman year beginning in March, when December occupied the tenth position. Calendar reform changed the position while the name persisted.
CONTRARIAN TRUTHS / 5
RANK 28GRADE Aranked reveal
German hostile agitation still carries a hound’s chase.
The medieval verb drives dogs after quarry. The same directed-force construction is soon applied to people: Middle High German records set people against one another, and Early New High German polemic sets rulers against Christians. Modern political hetzen is therefore not merely “hate” verbalized; it inherits a grammar of making another actor pursue, pressure, or attack.
RANK 47GRADE Aranked reveal
The Old Dutch enemy noun outlived the hate verb that created it.
ONW counts twenty-six fīunt occurrences across six attested case-number cells, yet classifies the noun as synchronically unsegmented and says the corresponding hate verb is no longer known in Dutch. Comparative evidence reconstructs the noun as an old present-participial formation: the hating one. The grammar therefore preserves a fossil in nominative, genitive, dative, and accusative records after Dutch lost the living verb that once made the formation transparent. Six cells are evidence, not a complete paradigm; the early Psalms records survive in later copies; and the lone Devil gloss is disputed.
RANK 67GRADE Aranked reveal
The Indigenous route is real scholarship—but not a closed case.
English securely borrowed Louisiana French bayouque. Early Choctaw *bayok is plausible, while the oft-repeated bayuk form and its contraction to modern bók remain insecure.
RANK 148GRADE Acontrarian claim
The ancient-looking title is Early Modern English.
Etymologist is a productive English formation on etymology + -ist, reported from 1604 or the 1630s—not an inherited Greek professional title.
RANK 196GRADE Branked reveal
The Finnish icon may be an ancient import.
A published proposal derives Proto-Finnic *sakna from a reconstructed Germanic pile or stack word through the heated stone pile of an early sauna stove. The edge remains visibly disputed.
043
BOOKS / DICTIONARIES / ARTICLES / DATABASES
SOURCES
historical grammar12 CLAIM LINKS
A Comparative Grammar of the Early Germanic Languages — Gothic hatis
R. D. Fulk / 2018
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗monograph4 CLAIM LINKS
A Comparative Grammar of the Early Germanic Languages
R. D. Fulk / 2018
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗digitized scholarly edition3 CLAIM LINKS
King Alfred’s West-Saxon Version of Gregory’s Pastoral Care, page 353
Henry Sweet, editor and translator / 1871
publisherAUDIT EVERY USE ↗053
FIRST USES & HISTORICAL OBJECTS
ATTESTATION WITNESSES
SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Early New High German proverb record
Haß / hasz / Hass / 1560
Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm — hasz, m.witness-title prefix / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Van Veen and Van der Sijs early Middle Dutch form inventory
vrient / vriend / 1201–1250, source-reported
Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands — vriendreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Middle English Dictionary lexical record for king
king / kyng / king / Middle English dictionary record
King n. — Middle English Dictionarywitness excerpt / OPEN RECORD ↗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.