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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 LOCAL5 source sections across 1 headword matching “Em”. These are separate from the reviewed results below.
emEnglish (en) · Etymology 1Source text
Attested since 1808. In typography, the em is named after the em quadrat (later called em quad), from m quadrat, a metal type used in letterpress typesetting, which is as wide as the point size of the font.
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗emEnglish (en) · Etymology 2Source text
emEnglish (en) · Etymology 3Source text
Coined by Christine M. Elverson by removing the "th" from them, perhaps influenced by the pre-existing em/'em, now often perceived as apheretic forms of them (though originally unrelated).
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗emEnglish (en) · Etymology 4Source text
Onomatopoeic. Compare um.
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗emEnglish (en) · Etymology 5Source text
From Russian эм (em), Ukrainian ем (em), etc.
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 →MODERN ENTRY POINTS
WORD DOSSIERS
emoji
An English borrowing of Japanese 絵文字, literally a picture-character compound built from 絵 e “picture” and 文字 moji “written character.”
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗emoticon
A keyboard-character sequence depicting a facial expression, posture, emotion, or attitude; an English compound of emotion and icon.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗emotion
Feeling or affect; borrowed through French from a Latin movement family and first used in English for disturbance, agitation, or social movement.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗boy
A male child or young man; Middle English also used the word for a male servant or churl, and its origin remains disputed.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗-logy
A bound English word element used in formations involving discourse or expression and in names of doctrines, theories, sciences, and fields of study.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗-rīx
An attested Gaulish second member meaning “king” or “prince,” visible in compound personal names such as Dumnorix and Vercingetorix and inherited from Proto-Celtic *rīx-s.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗December
The twelfth month in the modern calendar; its inherited Latin name literally identifies it as the tenth month.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗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 ↗Freund
German Freund continues Middle High German vriunt and Old High German friunt. DWDS/Pfeifer, Duden, and Grimm independently analyze the inherited Germanic formation as a substantivized present participle of the verb represented by Gothic frijōn and Old English frēogan: historically a loving or favorably disposed one. The record is semantically wider than a modern close companion: the historical dictionaries also document neighbor, relative, lover, ally, supporter, patron, address, and euphemistic uses. The graph joins the High German line to the same reviewed *frijōnd- and *frī- nodes as English friend, keeps *prī- proposed, and stops.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗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 ↗Liebe
The German noun for love, inherited through Middle and Old High German and a Germanic abstract-noun formation distinct from the immediate noun ancestry of English love.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗aguacate
The Spanish word for the avocado tree and fruit, borrowed from Nahuatl āhuacatl, whose historical records include both fruit and testicle senses.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY
HISTORICAL FORMS
embuier
to fetter
- DATE
- Old French
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 1
embuié
person in fetters
- DATE
- Old French
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 1
emoji
a small image, symbol, or icon used in electronic communication
- DATE
- 1997–today
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 1
emoticon
keyboard characters depicting a facial expression, posture, emotion, or attitude
- DATE
- 1987–today
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 1
emotion
feeling; originally also disturbance, agitation, or social movement
- DATE
- 1579–today
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 2
emouvoir / esmovoir
to stir up, move, or agitate
- DATE
- Old French, 12th century onward
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 2
émotion
movement, agitation, or disturbance
- DATE
- Middle French, 16th century
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 2
ēmovēre
to move out, remove, displace, or agitate
- DATE
- Latin antiquity
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 2
*daigjōn-
female baker or servant
- DATE
- Proto-Germanic
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
*dhghem-
earth
- DATE
- Proto-Indo-European centum form
- MATCH
- transliteration
- DOSSIERS
- 9
*dhg̑hem-
earth
- DATE
- oldest Proto-Indo-European form
- MATCH
- transliteration
- DOSSIERS
- 5
*dhē-mnā-
woman or nursing female formation
- DATE
- Proto-Indo-European suffixed reduced formation
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED
CLAIMS & DISPUTES
SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 12
Was emoticon first used in 1987 or only by 1992?
Merriam-Webster reports first known use in 1987; Etymonline reports the word by January 1992 and quotes an August 1992 explanation.
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.
Was emotion first used in the 1570s or exactly 1579?
Etymonline gives the decade; Merriam-Webster gives 1579. These are compatible levels of precision, not proof of one first utterance.
Can the movement family be pushed securely beyond *meue-?
Not from the reviewed evidence. Etymonline publishes *meue- for the movement root, but this dossier does not promote an older form without specialist comparative review.
Is emoji formed from emotion plus icon?
No. Unicode and Merriam-Webster identify Japanese 絵 e “picture” plus 文字 moji “written character.” Emotion plus icon is the distinct English formation emoticon.
Is emoticon another name or etymology for emoji?
No. Emoticon is English emotion plus icon. Emoji is Japanese e “picture” plus moji “character.” They can depict overlapping things without sharing a word formation.
Does emotion etymologically mean “energy in motion”?
No. That slogan is a modern folk segmentation. The documented route is French émotion through emouvoir / esmovoir to Latin ex- plus movēre, literally a movement-out or stirring family.
Is the deepest root *leǵ- or *sleǵ-?
The traditional *leǵ- reconstruction remains widely represented, while published scholarship argues that the gather or collect root began with *s. The graph preserves both analyses.
Did -rīx mean exactly “king” in every compound name?
Not necessarily. The king or prince value is secure for the element, but scholarship distinguishes names where it is determinative from analyses in which it is semantically bleached or intensifying. Each host therefore requires its own compositional claim.
Did English receive December through Old English or French?
The reviewed source allows either Old English or Anglo-French transmission from Latin and does not choose between them.
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.
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.
CONTRARIAN TRUTHS / 12
Only one of emoticon and emoji contains emotion.
Emoticon is English emotion plus icon. Emoji is Japanese picture plus character: conceptual neighbors, unrelated formations.
It has nothing to do with emotion.
Emoji is Japanese 絵 e “picture” plus 文字 moji “written character.” Emotion plus icon produced the separate word emoticon.
Emotion first moved crowds before it named inner feeling.
English emotion begins in disturbance, agitation, and social movement; strong feeling emerges later from the same movement-out family.
A stranger became both guest and enemy.
The reciprocal outsider behind guest and host also became Latin hostis, “enemy.”
Nice crossed from ignorance to approval.
Latin nescius “ignorant” became foolish or wanton, then fastidious and precise, and finally pleasant or kind.
A Turkish word is not proof of who invented the food.
English yogurt is Turkish yoğurt, probably related to yoğur- “knead”; the origin of fermented milk is a different historical question.
Legislation came before legislate.
The noun preserves a Latin law-bearing or law-proposing compound. English legislate was later back-formed from the already existing noun family.
The modern stigma of Weib is not the timeless nature of wīb.
Duden marks modern Weib increasingly discriminatory, while Old High German records preserve wīb in old-woman and wife expressions; the deeper origin remains unresolved.
Humiliation is evidenced in English before humiliate.
Chaucer’s Middle English humiliacioun occurs in a humility passage; Merriam-Webster reports the English verb humiliate only circa 1534. Christian Latin and French preserve lowering, abasement, mortification, and self-humbling before current definitions center degradation, disgrace, and shame.
The famous Gaulish ending is -rīx, not decorative -ix.
Cambridge identifies Gaulish -rix /-rīxs/ “king” inside Dumnorix and Vercingetorix and derives it from Proto-Celtic *rīx-s. The r belongs to the historical element; the exact force of that element still varies across individual names.
The x of rēx is a whole nominative sound change in one letter.
Latin starts from the bound stem rēg-, adds nominative -s, devoices g to k, and writes the resulting /ks/ as x. Genitive rēgis makes the stem visible—but it is a sibling case form, not an ancestor.
Kind is not kin with a d—and kindness did not begin as niceness.
Kind and kin descend through separate Germanic formations and meet only at the deeper birth root. The adjective first carries natural, native, fitting, and proper senses; benevolence becomes prominent through later semantic development.
BOOKS / DICTIONARIES / ARTICLES / DATABASES
SOURCES
Emotion — Origin and history
Douglas Harper / 2026
title prefixAUDIT EVERY USE ↗Emoticon — Definition, Word History, and First Known Use
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
title prefixAUDIT EVERY USE ↗Emotion — Definition, Word History, and First Known Use
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
title prefixAUDIT EVERY USE ↗Emoji — Word History
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
title prefixAUDIT EVERY USE ↗Indo-European Root: dhghem-
Calvert Watkins and American Heritage Dictionary Editors / 2022
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗Lemma fijan — Gothic dictionary and 42-token candidate inventory
Project Wulfila editors · Wilhelm Streitberg / 2026
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch — fîant, fîjant
Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch editorial team
publisherAUDIT EVERY USE ↗Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch — fîên
Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch editorial team
publisherAUDIT EVERY USE ↗Svenska Akademiens ordbok — FIENDE
Svenska Akademiens ordboksredaktion / 1924
author or editorAUDIT EVERY USE ↗eDIL — 1 cais, noun explained as both love and hate
Royal Irish Academy · eDIL editors / 2026
author or editorAUDIT EVERY USE ↗Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm — hassen
Jacob Grimm · Wilhelm Grimm · DWDS editorial team / 2026
publisherAUDIT EVERY USE ↗Lemma fijands — Gothic enemy noun and 26-token candidate inventory
Project Wulfila editors · Wilhelm Streitberg / 2026
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗FIRST USES & HISTORICAL OBJECTS
ATTESTATION WITNESSES
Merriam-Webster source-reported English record
emotion / emotion / 1579
Emotion — Definition, Word History, and First Known Useattested-form prefix / OPEN RECORD ↗Merriam-Webster source-reported English record
emoticon / emoticon / 1987
Emoticon — Definition, Word History, and First Known Useattested-form prefix / OPEN RECORD ↗English lexicographic first-use record for emoji
emoji / emoji / 1997
Emoji — Word Historyattested-form prefix / OPEN RECORD ↗Heliand manuscript M, enemy command
hatan / hatōn / Heliand composition circa 830–840; Munich manuscript second half of the ninth century
Heliand — BSB Cgm 25, scan 45, folio 22r, hatan locusreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗The first edition of the Académie française dictionary prints DESASTRE as a headword and defines it as a disastrous accident or misfortune.
désastre / disaster / 1694
Le dictionnaire de l'Académie française. Tome 1 (A–L), première éditionreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗The first edition of the Académie française dictionary prints HOSTEL as a headword in the historical French family later normalized as hôtel.
hôtel / hotel / 1694
Le dictionnaire de l'Académie française. Tome 1 (A–L), première éditionreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗The PESTE entry in the first edition of the Académie française dictionary uses quarantaine for imposed isolation after travel from a place suspected of plague.
quarantaine / quarantine / 1694
Le dictionnaire de l'Académie française. Tome 2 (M–Z), première éditionreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗The first edition of the Académie française dictionary prints SINCERE as a headword and opens with the senses true and frank.
sincère / sincere / 1694
Le dictionnaire de l'Académie française. Tome 2 (M–Z), première éditionwitness excerpt / OPEN RECORD ↗John Harris’s Lexicon technicum prints DECIMAL in the head phrase DECIMAL Fraction and begins its mathematical definition.
decimal / decimal / 1704
Lexicon technicum: or, an universal English dictionary of arts and sciencesreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗The CHIMES entry in John Harris’s Lexicon technicum uses calculate in instructions about clock-chime numbers.
calculate / calculate / 1704
Lexicon technicum: or, an universal English dictionary of arts and scienceswitness excerpt / OPEN RECORD ↗The SYSTEM entry in John Harris’s Lexicon technicum uses Science for an organized branch of knowledge when defining a system of philosophy.
science / science / 1704
Lexicon technicum: or, an universal English dictionary of arts and scienceswitness excerpt / OPEN RECORD ↗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 ↗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.