GRAPH-WIDE SEARCH
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 LOCALNo exact match for “Husband” 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 →011
MODERN ENTRY POINTS
WORD DOSSIERS
022
ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY
HISTORICAL FORMS
033
WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED
CLAIMS & DISPUTES
SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 2
resolvedestablishedexact word
Is husband a native English kinship term built from house plus band?
No. English borrowed a Norse householder compound: hūs plus bōndi or būandi. Band is not a component.
resolvedestablishedexact word
Did husband originally mean only a married man?
No. The earlier center was householder or master of a house; household and spouse senses overlapped before the modern specialization.
CONTRARIAN TRUTHS / 1
RANK 120GRADE Aexact ranked word
A husband was a householder before he was a spouse.
English borrowed Old Norse hūsbōndi, house plus householder; spouse meaning grew from household status.
042
BOOKS / DICTIONARIES / ARTICLES / DATABASES
SOURCES
historical dictionary13 CLAIM LINKS
Husband — Definition, Word History, and First Known Use
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
title prefixAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary8 CLAIM LINKS
Husband — American Heritage Dictionary and Word History
American Heritage Dictionary Editors / 2022
title prefixAUDIT EVERY USE ↗051
FIRST USES & HISTORICAL OBJECTS
ATTESTATION WITNESSES
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.