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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 LOCAL3 source sections across 2 headwords matching “First”. These are separate from the reviewed results below.
FirstEnglish (en) · Unnumbered etymologySource text
* As a German surname, variant of Fürst, Furst. * As a Jewish surname, from Yiddish פֿירשט (firsht, “prince”), a rendition of the above. * As a Serbo-Croatian and Slovene, from the noun firšt (“prince”), a loanword from German and thus related to the above.
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗firstEnglish (en) · Etymology 1Source text
From Middle English first, furst, ferst, fyrst, from Old English fyrest, from Proto-West Germanic *furist, from Proto-Germanic *furistaz (“first, foremost”), superlative of Proto-Germanic *furai, *furi (“before”), from Proto-Indo-European *preh₂- (“before”), from *per- (“before; first”), equivalent to fore + -est. Cognates Cognate with Scots first (“first”), Dutch voorste (“foremost, first”), vorst (“prince”), German Fürst (“chief, prince”, literally “first (born)”), Limburgish Vürsch (“prince”), Luxembourgish viischt (“anterior; forward”), Vilamovian fiyśt, fjəšt, fjyśt, fjyšt (“prince”), Danish and Norwegian Bokmål først (“first”), Faroese and Icelandic fyrstur (“first”), Norwegian Nynorsk fyrst, først (“first”), Swedish först (“first”); also Latin prīnceps (“first, foremost; chief”), Greek παρ’ (par’), παρά (pará, “despite; less”), Mycenaean Greek 𐀞𐀫 (pa-ro, “from”), Albanian parë (“first; chief, main”), Latgalian pyrmais (“first”), Latvian pirmais (“first; foremost”), Lithuanian pirmas (“first; primary”), Bulgarian пъ́рви (pắrvi), пръ́в (prắv, “first”), Czech and Slovak prvý (“first”), Macedonian прв (prv), први (prvi, “first”), Polish piersy, pierwszy, pirszy (“first”), Russian пе́рвый (pérvyj, “first”), Serbo-Croatian пр̑вӣ, pȓvī (“first”), Slovene prvi (“first”), Armenian հարավ (harav, “south”), Avestan 𐬞𐬀𐬎𐬭𐬎𐬎𐬀 (paᵘruua, “before, first”), Tocharian A pärwat (“first”), Tocharian B parwe (“first”), Sanskrit पूर्व (pūrva, “before”).
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗firstEnglish (en) · Etymology 2Source text
From Middle English first, furst, fyrst, from Old English fyrst, fierst, first (“period, space of time, time, respite, truce”), from Proto-Germanic *frestaz, *fristiz, *frestą (“date, appointed time”), from Proto-Indo-European *pres-, *per- (“forward, forth, over, beyond”). Cognate with North Frisian ferst, frest (“period, time”), German Frist (“period, deadline, term”), Swedish frist (“deadline, respite, reprieve, time-limit”), Icelandic frestur (“period”). See also frist.
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
nouncontrarian claim
algorism
The older English word for calculation with Hindu-Arabic numerals, transmitted through French and Medieval Latin from the name al-Khwārizmī.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗Middle Irish noundossier summary
cais
eDIL separates two Irish headwords written cais. The first, also recorded as caise, is explicitly explained both as love and as hate; its cited passages and glossary equations range from searc and grádh "love" to miscais and mioscais "hatred", with context deciding individual readings. One Éigse line is tentatively translated so that the same visible form occurs on both sides: "my love ... is met by hatred(?)". The question mark matters. The second eDIL headword cais means "eye" and is excluded from this semantic lineage. These records establish a remarkable lexicographic opposition, not one timeless essence, a chronology from love to hate, or proof that every occurrence belongs to one historically indivisible sense. John T. Koch compares the noun with Proto-Celtic *katsi- < *kad-t/si- and a wider *kad- family, but that ancestry and its proposed Germanic comparison remain open. eDIL itself generally supplies etymologies only selectively. No manuscript pixels were directly inspected, no earliest-use or historical-frequency claim is made, and no exact pronunciation is invented.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗adjectivecontrarian claim
candid
Open or frank in modern English, inherited through French and Latin from a family of brightness and whiteness.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗noun · verbcontrarian claim
clew
A ball of thread, a nautical corner or line, and the older spelling behind clue.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗verbdossier summary
decimate
To destroy or reduce drastically; borrowed from a Latin verb built on “tenth” and first used in English for killing every tenth member of a group.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗noundossier summary
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 ↗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 ↗Gothic class-II weak-verb lemmadossier summary
hatizōn
A Gothic weak verb meaning be angry with or at someone, represented by exactly one verified corpus token: present active second-person plural hatizoþ in John 7:23. Project Wulfila and Streitberg align the form with Greek χολᾶτε in the question “are you angry at me?” and analyze the verb with a dative object. The University of Texas derivational grammar builds class-II hatizōn on the consonantal stem hatiz- of hatis “hatred” or “wrath”; Wright independently lists it as a class-II weak verb. The macronized infinitive is a scholarly citation form, while the manuscript writes only the inflected token without a vowel-length mark. The route continues through the reviewed Germanic noun family and a qualified Indo-European comparison, then stops. One corpus token cannot establish spoken rarity, first use, a complete semantic range, exact pronunciation, or one prehistoric essence.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗Old Saxon class-II weak verbdossier summary
hatōn
The normalized Old Saxon weak-verb lemma hatōn is supported by a four-locus dictionary inventory: Heliand 1451 writes infinitive hatan in manuscript M and haton in manuscript C; Heliand 4915 writes genitive-plural present-participial hatandiero in M and hettendero in C; manuscript C supplies preterite hatoda at Heliand 5423; and GlG supplies infinitive haton aligned with Latin odisse. Those are six witness readings at four cited loci, not six independent lexemes or four manuscripts. The first Munich infinitive and the Munich hatandiero locus were directly inspected. The category problem is deeper than spelling: Köbler also indexes the Heliand 4915 forms under the separate agent noun hėttiand, enemy. The record therefore exposes the exact point where a live participial form and a lexicalized enemy noun overlap. It does not prove that pursue was the root meaning, that every enemy hates, or that every indexed form belongs unambiguously to one synchronic category.
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 ↗noundossier summary
hospital
A medical institution whose name first referred to guest accommodation and charitable lodging, through Medieval Latin hospitāle.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗noundossier summary
lesson
A unit of instruction or something learned, descending through a word that first named an act or selection of reading.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗021
ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY
HISTORICAL FORMS
0324
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.
openprobableposition text
Does the English record begin in the 13th or 15th century?
The reviewed source reports differ. Etymonline gives mid-thirteenth-century arsmetike; Merriam-Webster gives a fifteenth-century first-known-use horizon.
openestablishedposition text
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.
openprobableposition text
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.
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.
openestablishedposition text
What is the exact earliest surviving Danish fjende token?
Not established by the inspected public evidence. Gammeldansk Ordbog reports fiende as known since 1100–1300 but exposes no exact first token on the entry page.
openestablishedposition text
What is the exact earliest surviving fjá token?
Not established here. The reviewed sources supply poem and stanza locations but no directly inspected manuscript object, exact composition date, or uncontested first-use year.
openprobableposition text
Did friend or kin come first semantically?
The inherited agent formation and daughter-language distributions do not recover one securely dated semantic split. Old Norse evidence preserves overlap rather than a single transition record.
openestablishedposition text
What is the exact earliest surviving fīēn token?
Not established here. AWB supplies a bounded manuscript horizon and edition locators but no single inspected first object or exact year.
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.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Does āhuacatl prove that the fruit was named after a testicle?
No. The historical dictionaries establish that one Nahuatl word had fruit and anatomical senses; they do not establish which sense came first or motivated the other.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Was algorithm first used in 1699 or 1926?
Both dates describe different editorial claims. Oxford/MacTutor reports the spelling in 1699 for numeral calculation; Merriam-Webster gives 1926 for the currently defined finite-procedure sense.
CONTRARIAN TRUTHS / 12
RANK 2GRADE Aranked reveal
Truth began with firmness and fidelity.
Before truth centered factual correspondence, its family named what was firm, faithful, and steadfast.
RANK 22GRADE Aranked reveal
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.
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 39GRADE Aranked reveal
Old Norse fjándi was an enemy before it was the Devil.
Cleasby and Vigfússon identify the inherited -nd- shape as participial and gloss the older formation as properly a hater. Their first sense is the ordinary enemy; only after the introduction of Christianity does the historical account assign fjándi the fiend branch. ONP then reveals how far the word traveled: 222 citations across enemy, demon, evil spirit, pagan god, Satan, and derogatory uses for hated or bewitched beings and things. The truth is not that every enemy secretly hates. It is that a lexicalized agent noun became an ordinary social category, then accumulated new religious and expressive work.
RANK 43GRADE Aranked reveal
Old Norse hate was action, contempt, humiliation, and feeling inside one verb.
ONP's 101-citation prose article orders four active senses before its participial and reciprocal branches: persecute; despise, reject, or cast aside; mock or humiliate; and hate, despise, or stand hostile. Fritzner independently moves from pursuit and destruction to ordinary hate. A c1200 manuscript leaf visibly writes hata in a command to love chastity and hate no person. The article's sense order is not a chronology, and the poetic concordance is explicitly unreviewed; the reveal is the documented semantic range, not an invented first essence.
RANK 48GRADE Aranked reveal
Old Saxon hate crosses from verb into enemy noun inside one manuscript locus.
Köbler assigns hatōn four cited loci, but the evidence is not four neat tokens. Heliand 1451 alone varies between Munich hatan and Cotton haton. At Heliand 4915, Munich hatandiero and Cotton hettendero are indexed twice: under the verb as present-participial forms and under hėttiand as the lexicalized agent noun enemy. The Munich hatan and hatandiero pixels are directly inspected. The reveal is therefore grammatical, not mystical: one written formation sits at the boundary between haters and enemies. It does not prove that every enemy hates, that pursue was the first meaning, or that the four-locus dictionary count represents four manuscripts.
RANK 73GRADE Acontrarian claim
Algorithm is the altered version; algorism came first.
The word began in al-Khwārizmī's geographic name. Greek arithmos later helped put “th” into algorithm without becoming its ancestor.
RANK 85GRADE Acontrarian claim
“Etymological” did not first mean scientific.
The earliest source-reported French use around 1550 describes names that reveal their “true sense.” The modern adjective’s relation-to-a-discipline sense arrived over a much older truth-seeking metaphor.
RANK 137GRADE A-ranked reveal
Middle Irish cais could mean love or hate—and a separate cais meant eye.
eDIL's first numbered cais headword is explicitly explained as both love and hate. Its glossary evidence equates the form with serc and grádh on the love side and miscais or mioscais on the hatred side; cited passages likewise cross the divide. Most strikingly, one Éigse line is tentatively translated "my love ... is met by hatred(?)", placing the same visible form on both sides while preserving the editor's question mark. Then eDIL's second numbered cais headword breaks the spell entirely: it means eye. The unveiling is not that love and hate were secretly identical. It is that written identity, lexicographic grouping, contextual meaning, and historical ancestry are four different claims.
RANK 144GRADE Acontrarian claim
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.
RANK 152GRADE Acontrarian claim
Verbatim was an adverb first.
English borrowed Medieval Latin verbatim “word for word” in the fifteenth century; the adjective use appears in the reviewed record only in 1613.
RANK 176GRADE Aranked reveal
Hospice began as hospitality, not terminal care.
English hospice first named lodging, especially a religious guesthouse. Palliative care is a later specialization of the same shelter-and-care history.
0412
BOOKS / DICTIONARIES / ARTICLES / DATABASES
SOURCES
historical dictionary102 CLAIM LINKS
Hate — definition, etymology, and first known use
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary16 CLAIM LINKS
Dairy — Definition, Word History, and First Known Use
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary14 CLAIM LINKS
Dialogue — Definition, Word History, and First Known Use
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary14 CLAIM LINKS
Humiliate — Definition, Word History, and First Known Use
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary13 CLAIM LINKS
Adverb — Definition, Word History, and First Known Use
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary13 CLAIM LINKS
Candid — Definition, Word History, and First Known Use
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary13 CLAIM LINKS
Fiction — Definition, Word History, and First Known Use
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary13 CLAIM LINKS
Husband — Definition, Word History, and First Known Use
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary12 CLAIM LINKS
Kindred — definition, etymology, and first known use
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary12 CLAIM LINKS
Lord — Definition, Word History, and First Known Use
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary12 CLAIM LINKS
Prologue — Definition, Word History, and First Known Use
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary12 CLAIM LINKS
Proverb — Definition, Word History, and First Known Use
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗0512
FIRST USES & HISTORICAL OBJECTS
ATTESTATION WITNESSES
DIRECTLY INSPECTEDprinted book
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 ↗DIRECTLY INSPECTEDprinted book
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 ↗DIRECTLY INSPECTEDprinted book
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 ↗DIRECTLY INSPECTEDprinted book
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 éditionreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexicographic first use
Merriam-Webster first-known-use report
bride / bride / before the 12th century
Bride — Definition, Word History, and First Known Usereporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexicographic first use
English lexicographic first-use record for mussel
mussel / mussel / before the 12th century
Mussel — Word Historyreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexicographic first use
English lexicographic first-use record for mouse
mouse / mouse / before the 12th century
Mouse — Word Historyreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexicographic first use
English lexicographic first-use report for December
December / December / before the 12th century
December — Word Historyreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexicographic first use
Merriam-Webster first-known-use record for king
king / king / before the 12th century
King — definition, etymology, and first known usereporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexicographic first use
Merriam-Webster first-known-use record for kin
kin / kin / before the 12th century
Kin — definition, etymology, and first known usereporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexicographic first use
Merriam-Webster first-known-use record for kind as a noun
kind / kind / before the 12th century
Kind — definition, etymology, and first known usereporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexicographic first use
Merriam-Webster first-known-use record for kindred as a noun
kindred / kindred / before the 12th century
Kindred — definition, etymology, and first known usereporting source / 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.