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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 LOCALNo exact match for “Humility” in this partial English subset. That does not mean the full research corpus—or linguistic scholarship—has no record. Check the original dictionary entry ↗
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 →012
MODERN ENTRY POINTS
WORD DOSSIERS
023
ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY
HISTORICAL FORMS
●
Present-Day English / Indo-European
humility
freedom from pride or arrogance; the quality or state of being humble
- DATE
- 14th century–today
- MATCH
- exact historical form
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Middle English / Indo-European
humilite
humility; humble disposition or conduct
- DATE
- Middle English, 14th–15th centuries
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Late Latin / Indo-European
humilitās
lowness in a positive moral sense; humility opposed to pride
- DATE
- Ecclesiastical Latin
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
035
WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED
CLAIMS & DISPUTES
SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 3
openprobableexact word
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.
resolvedestablishedexact word
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.
resolvedestablishedposition text
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.
CONTRARIAN TRUTHS / 2
RANK 4GRADE Aexact ranked word
Humility is an earth-and-lowness metaphor.
Latin humus “ground” produced humilis “low,” then humilitās “lowness,” before the moral virtue.
RANK 16GRADE Aranked reveal
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.
042
BOOKS / DICTIONARIES / ARTICLES / DATABASES
SOURCES
051
FIRST USES & HISTORICAL OBJECTS
ATTESTATION WITNESSES
06
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