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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 LOCAL5 source sections across 1 headword matching “Eh”. These are separate from the reviewed results below.
ehEnglish (en) · Etymology 1Source text
Natural exclamation; first recorded mid-16th century. Perhaps an unstressed variant of aye (“yes, yeah”). The Philippine sense is possibly influenced by Tagalog e and/or Spanish eh.
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗ehEnglish (en) · Etymology 2Source text
From Hokkien 欸 (--eh) and Mandarin 欸 (ê̄ / ế / ê̌, interjection).
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗ehEnglish (en) · Etymology 3Source text
Probably of multiple motivations, the sounds having been chosen for functional reasons.
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗ehEnglish (en) · Etymology 4Source text
A reduced form of ain't.
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗ehEnglish (en) · Etymology 5Source text
From Hokkien 咧 (--leh), with the l dropped.
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
German masculine noundossier summary
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.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗German masculine noundossier summary
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.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗verb · nounhistorical form
check
To verify, restrain, mark, or issue a bank draft today; a word whose oldest English history begins with a threatened king in chess.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nounhistorical form
chess
The board game whose English name arrives through French chess vocabulary, with competing scholarly accounts of the deeper Persian and Arabic route.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗noun · verbdossier summary
clew
A ball of thread, a nautical corner or line, and the older spelling behind clue.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗verbcontrarian claim
feign
To invent, fabricate, make a likeness, or pretend; borrowed through Anglo-French from Latin fingere, to shape or fashion.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗noun and adjectivehistorical form
female
A sex-class term borrowed through French from Latin fēmella, a diminutive of fēmina, with its English spelling later remodeled under male.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗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.
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 ↗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.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗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.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗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.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗0212
ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY
HISTORICAL FORMS
*
Proto-Indo-European / Indo-European
*dheh₁(i)-
to suck
- DATE
- oldest Proto-Indo-European form
- MATCH
- transliteration
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Proto-Indo-European / Indo-European
*gn̥ə-t-
born or produced; a birth-, nature-, or kind-forming derivative
- DATE
- Proto-Indo-European suffixed zero grade
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Proto-Indo-European / Indo-European
*gn̥ə-yo-
generation, lineage, or kin formation
- DATE
- Proto-Indo-European suffixed zero grade
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 3
Proto-Indo-European / Indo-European
*mūs-
mouse; also the family behind specialized muscle words
- DATE
- Proto-Indo-European prehistory
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 4
Proto-Indo-European / Indo-European
*peh₁-
a proposed base associated with harm, blame, suffering, or hate
- DATE
- proposed Proto-Indo-European base
- MATCH
- transliteration
- DOSSIERS
- 14
Proto-Germanic / Indo-European
*rehtaz
right, just, correct, straight
- DATE
- Proto-Germanic horizon
- MATCH
- transliteration
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Proto-Indo-European / Indo-European
*rē-dh-
a suffixed formation behind condition, counsel, and related Germanic derivatives
- DATE
- Proto-Indo-European suffixed variant
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 0
Proto-Indo-European / Indo-European
*séh₂l-
salt
- DATE
- c. 4500–2500 BCE
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 2
Proto-Germanic / Indo-European
*tehun
ten
- DATE
- Proto-Germanic reconstruction, c. 500 BCE–200 CE
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Proto-Indo-European / Indo-European
*tkeH-
rule, have power, possess
- DATE
- dialectal Indo-European prehistory
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 3
Proto-Indo-European / Indo-European
*ḱeh₂d-
a proposed base glossed with grief, pain, and hatred
- DATE
- proposed Proto-Indo-European base
- MATCH
- transliteration
- DOSSIERS
- 19
Old Norse / Indo-European
bōndi
householder; dweller
- DATE
- Old Norse
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
0324
WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED
CLAIMS & DISPUTES
SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 12
openproposedposition text
Is the deepest *peh₁- route established?
No. The Germanic verb and lexicalized agent formation are firmer than the proposed Indo-European comparison, whose formal intermediates and semantic unity remain reconstructive.
openprobableposition text
Can the lexicalization of one who hates as enemy be dated to one exact event?
No unique event is known. Cross-branch evidence places it before the recorded daughter languages, but no text records the prehistoric lexicalization moment.
openprobableposition text
Was the relative sense inherited or independently strengthened in Germanic branches?
The sources establish the sense across German and Nordic evidence but do not recover one complete prehistoric semantic tree.
openprobableposition text
Does Hass securely descend from *ḱeh₂d-?
Only as a qualified proposal. Formal correspondence is published, but the semantic chain through grief, care, pain, pursuit, and hatred is not transparent.
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 the deepest *peh₁- route established?
No. The Germanic verb and lexicalized agent formation are firmer than the proposed Indo-European comparison, whose formal intermediates and semantic unity remain reconstructive.
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.
openproposedposition text
Does fiende securely descend from exactly *peh₁-?
Only as a qualified modern proposal. Kroonen publishes the route; Hellquist records a historically different deeper comparison, and neither recovers a written ancestral token or unique original semantic scene.
openproposedposition text
Does fijan securely descend from *peh₁-?
Only as a proposal. The Germanic *fi(j)ēn- comparison is stronger than the deeper route; the exact intermediate morphology and semantic unity of harm, blame, suffering, and hate remain reconstructive.
openproposedposition text
Does *fi(j)and- securely descend from *peh₁-?
Only through the proposed deeper analysis of its Germanic verb base. The lexicalized participle-to-verb relation is stronger than the Indo-European route, whose intermediate morphology and semantic unity remain reconstructive.
openproposedposition text
Does fjende securely descend from exactly *peh₁-?
Only as a qualified modern proposal. The Germanic noun-and-verb relationship is firmer than the displayed Indo-European route.
openproposedposition text
Does fjá securely descend from exactly *peh₁-?
Only as a qualified modern proposal. The Germanic comparison is firmer than the displayed Indo-European route.
CONTRARIAN TRUTHS / 12
RANK 1GRADE Aranked reveal
A stranger became both guest and enemy.
The reciprocal outsider behind guest and host also became Latin hostis, “enemy.”
RANK 17GRADE Aranked reveal
-logy never simply meant “the study of.”
The bound form’s recorded range includes expression and discourse as well as doctrine, theory, science, and study. Its trail reaches Greek logos—word, speech, account, reckoning, reason—rather than a prehistoric word meaning “science.”
RANK 24GRADE Aranked reveal
Hatred is medieval—and its -red means neither red nor “more.”
Middle English assembled hate with a dying native element for a state or condition. The compound is younger than its parts; below the secure Germanic hate family, even the celebrated PIE root remains a qualified and semantically difficult proposal.
RANK 25GRADE Aranked reveal
Hate was enemy-directed action as well as feeling in Old English.
Old English hatian could mean treating as an enemy, persecuting, or injuring; Beowulf puts the verb beside hostile deeds. The deeper claim that pursuit was the first meaning remains open, and the graph says so.
RANK 26GRADE Aranked reveal
Old English hated vices and deeds as well as people.
Bosworth–Toller’s Pastoral Care examples make conduct grammatical: rulers hate their subjects’ vices, and the text distinguishes loving what enemies are from hating what they do. The historical verb therefore records directed moral and hostile judgment, not only an inward emotion label.
RANK 27GRADE Aranked reveal
The Old English verb survives most visibly as an enemy.
The located weak-verb corpus inventory gives hettan only one form: hettende. Bosworth–Toller records that surface family repeatedly under hettend, “enemy” or “antagonist,” including Genesis and the Phoenix. The verb is therefore not a neat recovered paradigm; it is a lemma inferred at the edge between action, agent, and lexicalized foe.
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 29GRADE Aranked reveal
One Gothic hate verb survives once—in a command to do good to those who hate you.
Project Wulfila’s only verified hatjan token is hatjandam in Matthew 5:44, directly visible on Codex Argenteus folio 3v. A parallel “love your enemies” command in Luke 6:27 instead uses hatandans from class-III hatan. The translation gloss “hate” therefore hides a genuine grammatical and historical dispute.
RANK 30GRADE Aranked reveal
Gothic hatis—the noun related to English hate—survives chiefly as wrath, including the wrath to come and the wrath of God.
Project Wulfila reports fifteen tokens in hatis, hatiza, and hatize. Fourteen are biblical; Streitberg maps the family chiefly to Greek orgē, gives Galatians 5:20 thumos, and flags Ephesians 4:31 because both stand together. Codex Argenteus folio 129r directly preserves hatiza in “the wrath to come.” Even the paradigm resists simplification: synchronic neuter a-stem, historically an i-stem remodeled into it.
RANK 31GRADE Aranked reveal
Gothic’s two hate verbs trade places across two passages.
The complete surviving hatan corpus contains only hatandane in Luke 1:71 and hatandans in Luke 6:27. In Luke 1, fijandam supplies enemies while hatandane supplies those hating; in Luke 6, hatandans supplies enemies while fijandam supplies those hating. Both Codex Argenteus pages are directly inspected. The lexical swap—and the class-III versus class-I dispute—cannot be represented by one timeless translation arrow.
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 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.
042
BOOKS / DICTIONARIES / ARTICLES / DATABASES
SOURCES
0510
FIRST USES & HISTORICAL OBJECTS
ATTESTATION WITNESSES
DIRECTLY INSPECTEDprinted book
A passage in John Harris’s Lexicon technicum cites a Lecture by Nehemiah Grew about varieties of taste read before the Royal Society.
lecture / lecture / 1704
Lexicon technicum: or, an universal English dictionary of arts and sciencesreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Floyris, hearing the words of his friend
vrient / vriend / 1201–1225, source-reported
Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands — vriendwitness excerpt / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Matthias von Beheim, Matthew 5:11
haʒʒen / hassen / 1343 textual horizon, source-reported
Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm — hassenreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Matthias von Beheim, John 5:16
haʒʒen / hassen / 1343 textual horizon, source-reported
Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm — hassenreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Andrews Hawaiian dictionary entry
kapu / kapu / 1836 Hawaiian dictionary record
Kapu — Nā Puke Wehewehe ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻireporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Codex Ambrosianus D, Nehemiah 6:16
fijan / fijan / Gothic manuscript corpus, date not normalized
Lemma fijan — Gothic dictionary and 42-token candidate inventoryreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Codex Ambrosianus D, Nehemiah 6:16
fijands / fijands / Gothic manuscript corpus, date not normalized
Lemma fijands — Gothic enemy noun and 26-token candidate inventoryreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Wolf as enemy of game and livestock
Feind / Feind / early modern German, source-reported
Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm — feind, m.witness excerpt / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Notker psalm commentary, hostile-to-me formula
fīant / fīant / Old High German Notker record; source-reported
Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch — fîant, fîjantwitness excerpt / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Wachtendonck Psalms, Psalm 55:10
fīunt / fīunt / 901–1000; surviving copy 1595–1605
Oudnederlands Woordenboek — fīuntwitness 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.