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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 LOCAL2 source sections across 1 headword matching “Less”. These are separate from the reviewed results below.
lessEnglish (en) · Etymology 1Source text
Adverb from Middle English les, lesse, leasse, lasse, from Old English lǣs (“smaller, less”), from Proto-Germanic *laisiz, from Proto-Indo-European *leys- (“to shrink, grow thin, be gentle”). Cognate with Old Frisian lēs (“less”), Old Saxon lēs (“less”). According to Kroonen (2013), from a northern Indo-European root Proto-Indo-European *leh₂is- or *leh₃is-, which he connects to Lithuanian liesas (“lean”). Determiner and preposition from Middle English lees, lesse, leasse, lasse, from Old English lǣssa (“less”), from Proto-Germanic *laisizan-, from Proto-Germanic *laisiz (“smaller, lesser, fewer, lower”) (see above). Cognate with Old Frisian lessa (“less”). Verb from Middle English lessen, from the determiner. Noun from Middle English lesse, from the determiner.
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗lessEnglish (en) · Etymology 2Source text
From Middle English lesse, les, from Old English lǣs, as in þȳ lǣs þe.
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 →0111
MODERN ENTRY POINTS
WORD DOSSIERS
nounheadword prefix
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 ↗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 ↗verb · nouncontrarian claim
checkmate
An inescapable chess defeat and, figuratively, complete thwarting; a compound transmitted through French, Arabic, and Persian chess language.
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 ↗Old Norse masculine noundossier summary
fjándi
Old Norse fjándi is a masculine noun whose inherited shape still exposes a prehistoric agent formation. Cleasby and Vigfússon compare Gothic fiands, Old English feond, German Feind, Swedish fiende, and Danish fjende, identify the nd as participial, and gloss the older formation as properly a hater. They then distinguish the ordinary enemy sense from a post-Christian fiend development. The University of Copenhagen Dictionary of Old Norse Prose supplies 222 citations and six semantic zones: enemy or opponent; devil, monster, or demon; evil spirit; pagan god; the Devil or Satan; and a derogatory term for a hated or bewitched person, animal, or object. Lexicon Poeticum independently exposes 49 poetic records, including source-reported tenth-century enemy uses and later Christian fiend uses, while warning that its concordance and dates require checking. The noun therefore does not possess one timeless true meaning: an inherited lexicalized hater became an ordinary enemy word, and the branch later accumulated several demonic and derogatory senses. The displayed pronunciation is an editorial normalized approximation, not recorded historical audio. No underlying manuscript object is claimed as directly inspected in this dossier.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗Old English strong masculine nd-stem noundossier summary
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 ↗nouncontrarian claim
humility
Freedom from pride or arrogance; the quality or condition of being humble.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗Old Saxon adjectivedossier summary
hōti
Old Saxon hōti is a normalized adjective headword supported by three Heliand loci and five reported witness readings: nominative plural hotie in manuscript M and huotia in C at line 5183; accusative singular hotean in M and huotian in C at line 5246; and nominative singular huoti in C at line 5285. The Munich forms hotie and hotean are directly visible in Cgm 25 scans 150 and 152; the three Cotton readings remain source-reported. Köbler nevertheless prints hōti* with a trailing star, so the mark cannot be reduced to “no nominative exists”: the same entry explicitly reports nominative huoti. The deeper genealogy splits. UT groups hōti with the inherited hate family under Pokorny's k̑ād- “hate, displeasure, uneasiness”; Köbler cross-references hatōn as a headword but gives the adjective a distinct etymology through Germanic *hwōtja- beside *hwōtō “threat” and Pokorny's *kʷē̆d- / *kʷō̆d- complex “bore, prick, stab,” whose wider reflexes include whetting and inciting. The graph preserves both lanes. It does not turn hostile intent into a timeless essence, infer exact pronunciation from spelling, or pretend that a dictionary cross-reference settles ancestry.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nounhistorical form
poncho
An English borrowing from American Spanish whose deeper source remains disputed between Mapuche evidence and a Spanish-internal analysis.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗verb, adjectivecontrarian claim
select
To choose or mark out from a group, borrowed from Latin selectus and seligere, literally gathering apart.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nouncontrarian claim
چائے
The standard modern Urdu word for tea, recorded by Rekhta with Persian origin and a historical trail through older spellings such as چا and چاہ.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗027
ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY
HISTORICAL FORMS
●
Present-Day English / Indo-European
lesson
a unit of instruction or something learned
- DATE
- 13th century–today
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Middle English / Indo-European
lesson / lessoun
a reading, assigned text, or unit of instruction
- DATE
- Middle English, 13th–15th centuries
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Gothic / Indo-European
fian
j-less variant of fijan
- DATE
- Gothic historical-dictionary normalization
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 0
Anglo-French / Indo-European
leçon
a reading or lesson
- DATE
- Anglo-French, c. 1066–1500
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Persian / Indo-European
mānd
left, at a loss, helpless
- DATE
- Persian chess vocabulary
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Present-Day English / Indo-European
poncho
a blanket-like sleeveless garment with a head opening
- DATE
- 1717–today
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Spanish / Indo-European
poncho
poncho; sleeveless blanket-like garment
- DATE
- American Spanish from at least 1530
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
0319
WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED
CLAIMS & DISPUTES
SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 12
resolvedestablishedword prefix
Did lesson originally mean a spoken class?
Its secure ancestry points first to reading: Anglo-French leçon and Late Latin lectio, an act or selection of reading from legere. Instruction and learned-experience senses develop from that base.
openproposedposition text
Does Freund securely descend from exactly *prī-?
The comparison is published on the shared friend-family route but remains proposed and less secure than the Germanic formation.
openprobableposition text
Does checkmate literally mean the king is dead?
That is a longstanding Arabic analysis, but Merriam-Webster and Encyclopaedia Iranica favor a Persian loan meaning left, helpless, broken, or paralyzed.
openprobableposition text
Are fijan and fian separate Gothic verbs?
No separate lexeme is supported, but the formal history remains analytical. Project Wulfila redirects fian to fijan, Streitberg groups j-bearing and j-less forms, and Sturtevant discusses loss of j in the sequence.
openproposedposition text
Does frændi securely descend from exactly *prī-?
The comparison is published through the shared friend-family route but remains proposed and less secure than the Germanic participial formation.
openproposedposition text
Does frēond securely descend from exactly *prī-?
The deep comparison is published by American Heritage but remains proposed and less secure than the Germanic participial formation.
openprobableposition text
Are hettan and hatian the same Old English verb?
Probably not historically, but the surviving forms are easy to merge. Orel assigns hettan to *xatjanan and hatian to a separate *xatēnan ~ *xatōjanan formation; Clark Hall nevertheless sends hettende to hatian, and Bosworth–Toller cross-refers hettan to hatian.
openproposedposition text
Does vriend securely descend from exactly *prī-?
The shared deep comparison is published but remains proposed and less secure than Old Dutch and Germanic *frijōnd-.
resolvedprobableposition text
Does negative caisgen reveal the timeless core of cais?
No. The compound supplies one negative formation, not a license to reinterpret every positive citation as concealed hatred.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Does Portuguese chá disprove the sea-versus-land rule?
It disproves the rule as a universal law, not the global tendency. Portuguese merchants used a maritime route yet Portuguese retained a cha-type form.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Does feign descend from faint or feint?
No direct descent is established here. The root appendix groups them under the same nasalized shaping formation, while feign has its own documented French and Latin chain.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Does the suckle root give the true modern definition of female?
No. It is a proposed comparative analysis of the Latin word’s deep formation, not a timeless or prescriptive definition of people.
CONTRARIAN TRUTHS / 7
RANK 203GRADE Aranked-word prefix
A lesson began as a reading.
Anglo-French leçon and Late Latin lectio name reading before the word expands into instruction and something learned from experience.
RANK 4GRADE Aranked reveal
Humility is an earth-and-lowness metaphor.
Latin humus “ground” produced humilis “low,” then humilitās “lowness,” before the moral virtue.
RANK 15GRADE Acontrarian claim
The modern stigma of Weib is not the timeless nature of wīb.
Duden marks modern Weib increasingly discriminatory, while Old High German records preserve wīb in old-woman and wife expressions; the deeper origin remains unresolved.
RANK 31GRADE Aranked reveal
Gothic’s two hate verbs trade places across two passages.
The complete surviving hatan corpus contains only hatandane in Luke 1:71 and hatandans in Luke 6:27. In Luke 1, fijandam supplies enemies while hatandane supplies those hating; in Luke 6, hatandans supplies enemies while fijandam supplies those hating. Both Codex Argenteus pages are directly inspected. The lexical swap—and the class-III versus class-I dispute—cannot be represented by one timeless translation arrow.
RANK 40GRADE Aranked reveal
Modern Danish kept the enemy but lost the hate verb inside its grammar.
DDO identifies fjende as historically a present participle of a verb corresponding to Old Norse fjá, to hate or persecute. Old Danish fiende then survives through a remarkable surface cloud: Fiende, Fiænde, Finde, Fînde, clipped Fiend, and both two- and three-syllable scans. The current noun no longer means that every enemy literally feels hate; it names active opposition and extends to states, ideologies, animals, weather, and abstractions. The grammatical fossil unveils a history, not a timeless essence.
RANK 181GRADE A-ranked reveal
The king is not securely dead.
The familiar “shāh māt = the king died” translation matches Arabic morphology, but the better-supported historical analysis treats māt as a Persian loan meaning helpless, broken, or at a loss.
RANK 208GRADE A-ranked reveal
To select is to gather apart.
Latin seligere combines se- “apart” with legere “gather, select.” The same gathering verb sits behind lecture, lesson, legend, and collect.
042
BOOKS / DICTIONARIES / ARTICLES / DATABASES
SOURCES
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.