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 LOCAL2 source sections across 2 headwords matching “Major”. These are separate from the reviewed results below.
MajorEnglish (en) · Unnumbered etymologySource text
* As an English surname of Norman origin, from the personal name Malgier, via Old French from the Germanic name *Madalgari. See Mauger. * As a Hungarian surname, shortened from majorosgazda (see Majoros), or borrowed from German Meyer. * As a Polish, Czech, and Slovak surname, from the military rank major. * As a Jewish surname, variant of Meyer. * As a French and Occitan surname, from the adjective majeur and the military rank major. The latter appears in Canadian French, sometimes also as La Major.
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗majorEnglish (en) · Unnumbered etymologySource text
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *méǵh₂s Proto-Indo-European *-yōs Proto-Indo-European *méǵyōs Proto-Italic *majjōs Latin maiorder. Middle English major English major From Middle English major, from Latin maior, comparative of magnus (“great, large; noble, important”), from Proto-Indo-European *méǵh₂yōs (“greater”), comparative of *meǵh₂- (“great”). Compare West Frisian majoar (“major”), Dutch majoor (“major”), French majeur. Doublet of mayor. Noun sense 1 is a shortening of sergeant major, perhaps after Spanish mayor in the same sense.
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 →013
MODERN ENTRY POINTS
WORD DOSSIERS
adjectivedossier summary
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 ↗nouncontrarian claim
fiction
Invented narrative, imaginative creation, pretense, or legal assumption; borrowed through French from Latin fictio, an action of shaping, molding, or feigning.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nouncontrarian claim
poncho
An English borrowing from American Spanish whose deeper source remains disputed between Mapuche evidence and a Spanish-internal analysis.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗020
ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY
HISTORICAL FORMS
No reviewed record in this collection contains “major.” Absence describes this graph, not all of linguistic scholarship.
037
WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED
CLAIMS & DISPUTES
SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 5
openproposedposition text
Is Choctaw bayuk a securely attested source of bayou?
No. An early Choctaw *bayok is plausible and accepted in a major handbook, but later bayuk is not securely attested and contraction to bók was conjectural.
openproposedposition text
Is persona to phersu to prosōpon one certain chain?
No. Latin persōna to Etruscan phersu is probable in major references, while the deeper Greek comparison is proposed and contested.
openproposedposition text
Is poncho securely Mapuche or Spanish?
It remains disputed. A major English dictionary and Sánchez support Mapuche ancestry; current RAE and Iwasaki advance a Spanish-internal analysis grounded partly in an early 1530 record.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Did direct originally mean only immediate or unmediated?
No. The recorded history foregrounds straightening, guiding, pointing, and directing; immediacy is one later semantic branch.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Did regulate begin only as a legal-government word?
No. The reported meanings include govern, direct, order, and adjust; legal control is one major branch.
CONTRARIAN TRUTHS / 2
RANK 133GRADE Aranked reveal
Fiction is historically something shaped.
Latin fictiō names shaping or molding, feigning, and pretense before English literary narrative becomes one major center.
RANK 202GRADE Branked reveal
Boy may reach ox—but only through a disputed trail.
One proposal runs from a fettered person through a shackle, restraint collar, ox hide, and ox; another major reference says the origin is unknown.
040
BOOKS / DICTIONARIES / ARTICLES / DATABASES
SOURCES
No reviewed record in this collection contains “major.” Absence describes this graph, not all of linguistic scholarship.
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.