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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 LOCAL3 source sections across 1 headword matching “How”. These are separate from the reviewed results below.
howEnglish (en) · Etymology 1Source text
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *kʷ- Proto-Indo-European *kʷís Proto-Germanic *hwō Old English hū Middle English how English how From Middle English how, hou, hu, hwu, from Old English hū, from Proto-West Germanic *hwō, from Proto-Germanic *hwō (“through what, how”), from the same root as hwæt (“who, what”). /hw/ > /h/ due to wh-cluster reduction in Old English; compare who, which underwent this change later, and thus is spelt wh (Middle English spelling of /hw/) but pronounced /h/ (it previously had a different vowel, hence avoided the spelling and sound change in Old English). Vowel change per Great Vowel Shift. Akin to Scots hoo, foo (“how”), North Frisian ho, hü, hur (“how”), Saterland Frisian wo (“how”), West Frisian hoe (“how”), Dutch hoe (“how”), Low German ho, wo, wu (“how”), German wie (“how”), Swedish hur (“how”). See who and compare why.
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗howEnglish (en) · Etymology 2Source text
From Middle English howe, hough, hogh, partly from Old English hōh (“promontory”), and partly from Old Norse haugr (“a how, mound”). Compare Old French höe (“hillock, hill”), from the same Germanic source.
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗howEnglish (en) · Etymology 3Source text
From a Siouan language; compare Lakota háu. Alternatively from Wyandot haau.
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- HowEnglish · e-38538-4491
How, how, adv. in what manner: to what extent: for what reason: by what means: from what cause: in what condition: (N.T.) sometimes=that.—The how and the why, the manner and the cause. [A.S. hú is prob. a form of hwí, in
Read the full source record → - HowEnglish · e-38538-4492
How, Howe, how, n. (Scot.) a hollow, glen, dell, or narrow plain. [Prob. related to hole.]
Read the full source record → - HowEnglish · e-38538-4493
How, how, n. (prov.) a low hill. [Akin to high, A.S. heáh.]
Read the full source record →
0110
MODERN ENTRY POINTS
WORD DOSSIERS
adjectivecontrarian claim
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 ↗Gothic class-III weak-verb lemmadossier summary
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 ↗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.
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 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.
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 ↗Old High German weak-verb citation formdossier summary
hazzōn
An Old High German citation form in the inherited Germanic hate-verb family, printed beside hazzēn and spelling variants hazēn, hazōn, haʒʒēn, and haʒʒōn. Starling’s source record dates hazzēn to the eighth century and hazzōn to the ninth; Duden and Grimm’s DWB group the ēn and ōn forms in the history of German hassen. Corpus-wide research independently shows that some Old High German class-III ēn verbs also occur with class-II ōn forms, but the accessible abstract does not establish that hazzōn is one of its twenty repeatedly attested double forms. DWB reports haʒôn aligned with Latin aemulari and the forms hatamas and hatent with insequamur and insequuntur. Those reports support an action range involving following or hostile pursuit; they are not directly inspected manuscript tokens. Pokorny’s account, as transmitted by Starling, explicitly warns that the Germanic evidence does not prove “pursue” was the root’s basic meaning. The route therefore distinguishes the normalized headword, the combined historical variants, the reconstructed Germanic weak verb and noun family, the qualified Indo-European comparison, and the point where knowledge ends.
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 ↗nounhistorical form
husband
A married man in relation to a spouse; borrowed from a Norse compound whose earlier center was householder or master of a house.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗adjectivedossier summary
intelligent
Having or showing understanding, judgment, or mental capacity; borrowed from the Latin participle of intellegere.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗022
ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY
HISTORICAL FORMS
0318
WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED
CLAIMS & DISPUTES
SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 12
openprobabledispute-title prefix
How was historical cais pronounced in each cited period and region?
Not directly recoverable from the reviewed evidence. Written forms and variants do not constitute recorded audio or a complete phonological reconstruction.
openprobabledispute-title prefix
How was English etymological formed?
Merriam-Webster analyzes etymologic from Latin etymologicus and etymological as etymologic + -al; Etymonline analyzes etymology + -ical.
openprobabledispute-title prefix
How broadly distributed is *ghos-ti-?
The reconstruction is supported by Germanic, Italic, and Slavic evidence but is limited to a western set of Indo-European branches.
openprobabledispute-title prefix
How should Ephesians 2:3 hatize and hatis be parsed?
The witnesses disagree in form and the analytical layers disagree in labeling. Project Wulfila’s current morphology lists A hatize as genitive plural and B hatis as nominative or accusative singular; Braune calls B hatis a consonantal genitive beside A hatizē, while Streitberg’s later teaching glossary calls genitive hatis erroneous.
openprobabledispute-title prefix
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.
openprobabledispute-title prefix
How secure is the remote hospes compound?
Hospital’s path to Latin hospitāle and hospes is secure; the further reduction of hospes from *ghos-pot- remains probable rather than certain.
openboundarydispute-title prefix
How far beyond Korean 김치 can the trail securely go?
The reviewed sources establish English kimchi from Korean 김치. They do not establish a deeper lexical ancestor, so historical spellings or cultural antiquity are not promoted as a parent edge.
openprobabledispute-title prefix
How wide was the PIE meaning?
“Love” is a convenient gloss, but daughter languages point to a field including desire, pleasure, approval, and care.
resolvedestablisheddispute-title prefix
How many meanings does the ONP entry distinguish?
Six numbered zones, with additional formulas: enemy or opponent; devil, monster, or demon; evil spirit; pagan god; the Devil or Satan; and a derogatory hated or bewitched being or thing.
resolvedprobabledispute-title prefix
How did a reciprocal stranger become an enemy?
Early Latin hostis referred to a foreigner or legally recognized outsider before later Roman usage restricted it to a hostile outsider or enemy.
resolvedestablisheddispute-title prefix
How did intelligence become secret information?
The word already meant understanding and knowledge; news and strategic information developed from that information sense, later naming the services that gather it.
resolvedprobabledispute-title prefix
How secure is Proto-Indo-European *mūs-?
The cross-branch mouse word is reconstructed as PIE *mūs-, while any deeper ancestor remains outside the reviewed evidence.
CONTRARIAN TRUTHS / 6
RANK 7GRADE Aranked reveal
Nice crossed from ignorance to approval.
Latin nescius “ignorant” became foolish or wanton, then fastidious and precise, and finally pleasant or kind.
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 46GRADE Aranked reveal
Old High German hazzōn is a paradigm fault line, not proof that hate originally meant pursue.
The clean dictionary headword conceals paired ēn and ōn forms: Starling reports hazzēn in the eighth century and hazzōn in the ninth, Duden prints haʒʒēn and haʒʒōn, and the UT reflex index also records hazēn and hazōn. Corpus-wide research confirms that Old High German ēn verbs can show ōn double forms. DWB reports aemulari and insequi alignments that support emulation, following, or hostile pursuit—but Pokorny’s comparative warning is exact: Germanic evidence does not prove that pursue was the root’s basic meaning. The normalized form, the source-reported tokens, the paradigm analysis, and the prehistoric semantic claim are four different evidence layers.
RANK 54GRADE Aranked reveal
vriend and vijand are loving-one and hating-one mirror fossils—not cognates.
EWN, WNT, and MNW independently analyze vriend as an old present participle of the Germanic verb to love. EWN explicitly compares the formation of vijand, whose reviewed ancestry follows a different hate verb. Modern /vrint/ also makes visible how far living pronunciation can move from historical spelling. The real truth is a shared grammatical blueprint with distinct roots, not a manufactured story of one word dividing into friend and enemy.
RANK 163GRADE Aranked reveal
The enemy was once the stranger.
Older Latin hostis named a foreigner or legally recognized outsider. Roman authors themselves explain how usage narrowed toward the armed or public enemy.
RANK 180GRADE A-ranked reveal
Tea and chai are the same word after different journeys.
Both routes ultimately reach Chinese 茶. The te-type form traveled especially through Southern Min and Dutch maritime networks; the cha/chai-type family spread especially overland. WALS shows this is a global tendency with real exceptions, not a perfect rule.
040
BOOKS / DICTIONARIES / ARTICLES / DATABASES
SOURCES
No reviewed record in this collection contains “how.” Absence describes this graph, not all of linguistic scholarship.
052
FIRST USES & HISTORICAL OBJECTS
ATTESTATION WITNESSES
DIRECTLY INSPECTEDprinted book
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 ↗DIRECTLY INSPECTEDprinted book
A passage about the crystalline lens in John Harris’s Lexicon technicum uses the inflected English form collects while describing how the lens gathers and refracts rays.
collect / collect / 1704
Lexicon technicum: or, an universal English dictionary of arts and sciencesreporting 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.