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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 2 headwords matching “Hum”. These are separate from the reviewed results below.
HumEnglish (en) · Unnumbered etymologySource text
From German Cholm, from Italian Colmo.
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗humEnglish (en) · Etymology 1Source text
From Middle English hummen (“to hum, buzz, drone, make a murmuring sound to cover embarrassment”); akin to Dutch hommelen (“to bumble, buzz”), dialectal Dutch hommen (“to buzz, hum”), Middle High German hummen (“to hum”), probably ultimately of imitative origin.
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗humEnglish (en) · Etymology 2Source text
Borrowed from Hokkien 蚶 (ham).
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- HumEnglish · e-38538-4538
Hum, hum, v.i. to make a buzzing sound like bees: to utter a low, droning sound: to supply an interval in speaking by an audible sound.—v.t. to sing in a low tone: to applaud anything by humming:—pr.p. hum′ming; pa.p. hu
Read the full source record → - HumEnglish · e-38538-4539
Hum, hum, v.t. to impose on.—n. an imposition. [Contr. of humbug.]
Read the full source record →
MODERN ENTRY POINTS
WORD DOSSIERS
human
A member of humankind or relating to people, borrowed through French from Latin hūmānus and the homō family.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗humble
Modest, low in rank, or made low; borrowed through French from Latin humilis, an earth-and-ground formation.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗humiliate
To reduce someone in their own or others’ estimation, causing shame or loss of dignity; from Late Latin forms meaning to make low or humble.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗humiliation
The act, state, or instance of humiliating or being humiliated; degradation, disgrace, or shame.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗humility
Freedom from pride or arrogance; the quality or condition of being humble.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗humus
The dark organic portion of soil; an English scientific borrowing through New Latin from Latin humus, earth or ground.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗exhume
To remove from burial or recover from obscurity; borrowed from Medieval Latin exhumare, literally a formation on ex, out of, and humus, earth.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗bridegroom
A man about to be or recently married; remodeled from bridegome after the older man-word gome became opaque.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗calculator
A person or device that calculates, inherited from a medieval human-reckoner word and the Latin counting-pebble family.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗frēond
Old English frēond is the directly attested source-language noun behind modern friend. OED analyzes it as an inherited strong masculine agent noun in -nd, ultimately a noun use of the present participle of the Germanic base behind free, and documents West Saxon frēond, Northumbrian and Kentish frīond, Kentish frīand, mutated frīend and frȳnd, endingless plurals, and re-formed frēondas. Bosworth–Toller prints freónd and friónd, explicitly links freónde loving to freón or freógan, and supplies examples for companion, ally, relation, friend of God, friend versus foe, and friends acting as arbitrators. OED independently preserves close companion, non-enemy, ally, and kinsman senses in Old English. Cotton MS Vitellius A XV folio 152r was directly inspected at Beowulf 1018, where the pixels visibly preserve freondum in Heorot innan wæs freondum afylled. The route reuses the reviewed *frijōnd-, *frī-, and proposed *prī- nodes and then stops. The displayed pronunciation is a normalized approximation, not a recorded voice.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗hata
Old Norse hata is not only a medieval label for an inward feeling. The Dictionary of Old Norse Prose structures 101 prose citations under four active senses before its participial and reflexive branches: persecute; despise, reject, or cast aside; mock or humiliate; and hate, despise, or stand hostile toward. That ordering is a lexicographic analysis, not a chronology of semantic change. Fritzner independently begins with pursue or seek to destroy, continues through damage or destruction, and only then gives hate opposed to love. Zoëga likewise preserves poetic damage or destruction beside ordinary hate, while Cleasby and Vigfússon record active, reflexive, reciprocal, participial, and disputed poetic uses. Lexicon Poeticum displays eleven linked rows, including variants, damage, destruction, persecution, loathing, haters, and the gold-spending formula, but warns that its concordance has not been reviewed and that dates need checking. A c1200 scan of Holm perg 15 4°, folio 89v, was directly inspected against ONP's diplomatic transcription and visibly preserves hata in the line Elſcaþu hréinlife oc hata engi maɴ. All other rows remain source-reported. The generated possible runic inscriptions on modern dictionary transcriptions are excluded, and no exact historical pronunciation is invented.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗hatis
A Gothic noun conventionally glossed hate, hatred, anger, or wrath. Project Wulfila reports fifteen corpus tokens in three surface forms: hatis, hatiza, and hatize. Its fourteen biblical tokens translate Greek wrath vocabulary rather than supplying a clean mirror of modern personal dislike: Streitberg maps the family chiefly to orgē, assigns Galatians 5:20 to thumos, and leaves Ephesians 4:31 unresolved because both Greek nouns stand together. The visible Gothic paradigm is also historical evidence: Project Wulfila treats hatis as a neuter a-stem, while Fulk analyzes it as an inherited i-stem transferred to the a-stems.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY
HISTORICAL FORMS
humain
human
- DATE
- Middle English
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 1
humain
human
- DATE
- Anglo-French
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 1
humain
human
- DATE
- Old French
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 0
human
human being; relating to humankind
- DATE
- 15th century–today
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 1
humble
modest; low in rank; unpretentious
- DATE
- 13th century–today
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 1
humble
low; modest; submissive
- DATE
- Middle English
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 1
humble
low; humble
- DATE
- Anglo-French
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 1
humiliacioun
humbling, abasement, or humbled condition
- DATE
- late 14th-century Middle English record
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 1
humiliate
reduce to a lower position in one’s own or others’ eyes; cause shame or embarrassment
- DATE
- circa 1534–today
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 1
humiliation
act, state, or instance of humiliating; degradation, disgrace, or shame
- DATE
- 14th century–today
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 1
humiliation
act intended to humble; fact of being humble or humbling oneself
- DATE
- Middle French, before 1449–1495 record
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 1
humilis
low; humble
- DATE
- Latin antiquity
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 4
WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED
CLAIMS & DISPUTES
SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 12
Does the etymology prove one exact moment when low became morally humble?
No. The lexical formation is secure, but the sources do not date a single physical-to-social-to-moral transition.
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.
What is the earliest secure English humility witness?
Merriam-Webster reports the fourteenth century broadly. The Middle English Dictionary supplies a circa-1390 Chaucer citation with humylitee, but this review did not inspect its underlying manuscript witness, and the located citation does not prove that no earlier English occurrence survives.
Does human descend directly from Latin humus, soil?
No. Latin homō and humus are sibling reflexes analyzed under the earth root; hūmānus belongs to the homō family.
Was earthling an attested original word for human?
No. Earthling is a modern gloss for reconstructed *(dh)ghom-on-, not a surviving Proto-Indo-European inscription.
Is humble historically connected with the ground?
Yes. Merriam-Webster derives Latin humilis from humus, earth, and the comparative root appendix places the family under *dhghem-.
Is the immediate Latin source a participle or a verb stem?
Merriam-Webster names Late Latin humiliatus, the past participle of humiliare; American Heritage summarizes Late Latin humiliāre, humiliāt-. These are compatible levels of the same formation, not evidence for two unrelated ancestries.
Does English humiliate descend directly from dirt or English humus?
No. English humiliate passes through Late Latin humiliatus and humiliare, then Latin humilis. Humilis is formed from Latin humus; the modern English soil word is a separate later borrowing.
Did humiliation always center disgrace and shame?
No. Christian Latin and historical French include lowering, abasement, mortifying discipline, and self-humbling. Chaucer’s Middle English occurrence appears within a treatment of humility, while current American Heritage definitions center degradation, disgrace, and shame.
Was English humiliation formed from the English verb humiliate?
The documented chronology points the other way: Middle English humiliacioun is evidenced in Chaucer, whereas Merriam-Webster reports the English verb humiliate only circa 1534. Both English words descend through the Latin humilis family; the noun is not modeled as a modern English derivative of the later-attested verb.
Was humility originally a positive moral virtue?
Not in every recorded Latin sense. Classical humilitās names physical lowness and low stature, then low rank, insignificance, meanness, or abjectness. Lewis and Short separately marks the good sense opposed to pride as ecclesiastical Latin.
Are humus, soil, and hummus, chickpea paste, the same word?
No. American Heritage separates Latin humus, soil, from the Arabic and possibly Aramaic food word hummus.
CONTRARIAN TRUTHS / 12
Humility is an earth-and-lowness metaphor.
Latin humus “ground” produced humilis “low,” then humilitās “lowness,” before the moral virtue.
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.
Human reaches earth as a reconstructed earthling, not a direct dirt word.
Latin hūmānus belongs with homō; comparative analysis derives homō from *(dh)ghom-on-, an earthling formation on *dhghem-, earth.
Humble is an earth word.
Latin humilis, low or humble, is formed from humus, earth or ground, inside the *dhghem- family.
Human does not descend from humus.
Latin humus and homō are sibling formations under *dhghem-; the English words meet only at reconstructed depth.
Humiliate is historically to make low.
Late Latin humiliāre means to make low or humble and grows from humilis, low or near the ground, which is formed from humus, earth. Modern shame and loss of dignity sit on that lowering history.
It was never humanity’s universal ancient name for spiritual practitioners.
English globalized a specific Evenki term through European scholarship and applied it to many unrelated traditions.
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.
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.
Woman does not contain womb.
Old English wīfman combines wīf, woman or wife, with mann, human being or person; contraction hid the compound in plain sight.
Man was a human word before adult male became its center of gravity.
Old English mann principally meant a human being or person, while wer and wīf could mark male and female.
Exhume is literally built on out of plus earth.
Medieval Latin exhumare combines ex, out of, and humus, earth—the same Latin earth noun behind English humus.
BOOKS / DICTIONARIES / ARTICLES / DATABASES
SOURCES
Humiliate — Definition, Word History, and First Known Use
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
title prefixAUDIT EVERY USE ↗Humble — Definition, Word History, and First Known Use
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
title prefixAUDIT EVERY USE ↗Human — Definition, Word History, and First Known Use
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
title prefixAUDIT EVERY USE ↗Humiliation — Definition and Etymology
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
title prefixAUDIT EVERY USE ↗Humiliation — étymologie et histoire
CNRTL · ATILF Editors / 2026
title prefixAUDIT EVERY USE ↗Humility — Definition, Use, and First Known Use
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
title prefixAUDIT EVERY USE ↗Human — American Heritage Dictionary
American Heritage Dictionary Editors / 2022
title prefixAUDIT EVERY USE ↗Humiliacioun — Chaucer spelling index and Parson’s Tale record
Larry D. Benson · Harvard Chaucer Editors / 2026
title prefixAUDIT EVERY USE ↗Humiliate — American Heritage Dictionary
American Heritage Dictionary Editors / 2022
title prefixAUDIT EVERY USE ↗Humilitas — Lewis and Short Latin Dictionary
Charlton T. Lewis · Charles Short · Scaife ATLAS Editors / 1879
title prefixAUDIT EVERY USE ↗Humility — American Heritage Dictionary
American Heritage Dictionary Editors / 2022
title prefixAUDIT EVERY USE ↗Humilité — étymologie et histoire
CNRTL · ATILF Editors / 2026
title prefixAUDIT EVERY USE ↗FIRST USES & HISTORICAL OBJECTS
ATTESTATION WITNESSES
Middle English Dictionary citation to Chaucer’s Parson’s Tale
humilite / humility / circa 1390 reported quotation
Humblen — Middle English Dictionary entry and citationsattested-form prefix / OPEN RECORD ↗Jean de Stavelot, Chronique
humiliation / humiliation / before 1449 source-reported French record
Humiliation — étymologie et histoireattested-form prefix / OPEN RECORD ↗Merriam-Webster first-known-use report
humiliate / humiliate / circa 1534 first known use
Humiliate — Definition, Word History, and First Known Useattested-form prefix / OPEN RECORD ↗Merriam-Webster first-known-use report for humus
humus / humus / 1796
Humus — Definition, Word History, and First Known Useattested-form prefix / OPEN RECORD ↗Merriam-Webster first-known-use report for human
human / human / 15th century
Human — Definition, Word History, and First Known Useattested-form prefix / OPEN RECORD ↗Merriam-Webster first-known-use report for humble
humble / humble / 13th century
Humble — Definition, Word History, and First Known Useattested-form prefix / OPEN RECORD ↗Merriam-Webster first-known-use report
humility / humility / 14th century first known use
Humility — Definition, Use, and First Known Useattested-form prefix / OPEN RECORD ↗Geoffrey Chaucer, The Parson’s Tale
humiliacioun / humiliation / late 14th-century Middle English corpus record
Humiliacioun — Chaucer spelling index and Parson’s Tale recordattested-form prefix / OPEN RECORD ↗Dream of the Rood, human enemies
fēond / fēond / Old English, source-reported
An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Online — feóndreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗Merriam-Webster first-known-use report
exhume / exhume / 15th century first known use
Exhume — Definition, Word History, and First Known Usereporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SEARCH IS DISCOVERY, NOT PROOF
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