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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 “Persecute” 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 →Persecute
No extractable etymology was found for this exact spelling. Open the original dictionary entry ↗
Read the complete entry and references ↗ · Contribute a cited dossier
015
MODERN ENTRY POINTS
WORD DOSSIERS
Danish common-gender noundossier summary
fjende
Modern Danish fjende is the ordinary noun for a person, state, force, ideological opponent, or figurative thing that harms something else. Den Danske Ordbog derives it from Old Norse fjándi, compares German Feind, and identifies the older formation as a present participle of a verb corresponding to Old Norse fjá, to hate or persecute. Gammeldansk Ordbog records fiende broadly from 1100–1300. Ordbog over det danske Sprog preserves fiende, finde, and related spellings, an ordinary enemy sense, military and animal uses, abstract threats, and a special religious Devil branch. Holbergordbog shows that Fiende could still scan as either three syllables or two, alongside Fiænde, Finde, Fînde, and clipped Fiend. The word is therefore a grammatical fossil, not a current psychological definition: a lexicalized one-who-hates became the ordinary Danish enemy noun and accumulated broad contextual work. The current pronunciations are dictionary records, not retrojections into medieval Danish. No manuscript or print object is claimed as directly inspected.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗Old English verbdossier summary
fēogan
An Old English verb meaning hate or persecute, recorded as FEÓGAN, feógean, fiógan, contracted feón and fión, with participle feógende and a broad present-and-past paradigm. Bosworth–Toller supplies examples whose objects include crimes, evil ways, law, peace, a temple, friends, and people. The verb continues reconstructed Proto-Germanic *fi(j)ēn-. Its active-participial formation lexicalized prehistorically as the enemy noun behind Old English fēond and modern fiend, but the verb, participle, and noun are not one interchangeable category.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗Old Norse weak verbcontrarian claim
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 ↗noun · verbhistorical form
hate
An inherited Germanic hostility word whose English noun and verb histories converge imperfectly: Old English preserves both hete and hatian, Middle English may have remodeled the noun from the verb, and the proposed deeper Indo-European family remains semantically opaque.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗German weak verbhistorical form
hetzen
A German weak verb whose modern senses range from driving or hunting quarry, through hurrying, to inciting hostility. The medieval record centers on setting dogs after game and already extends the action to turning people against one another. Comparative sources connect the verb with Old English hettan and Gothic hatjan, but the Old High German bridge and the exact prehistoric formation remain editorially disputed.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗024
ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY
HISTORICAL FORMS
*
Old High German / Indo-European
*hezzen
a reconstructed weak verb meaning chase or persecute
- DATE
- reconstructed Old High German bridge
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Old English / Indo-European
fēogan
to hate or persecute
- DATE
- Old English written record
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Old Norse / Indo-European
hata
to persecute; reject or despise; humiliate; hate; damage or destroy in poetic use; become or remain hostile in reflexive constructions
- DATE
- Old Norse prose and poetic record
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Old English / Indo-European
hatian
to hate, treat as an enemy, persecute, or in a cited context pursue
- DATE
- Old English
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 2
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WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED
CLAIMS & DISPUTES
SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 5
openproposedposition text
Did hettan mean hate, pursue, attack, or persecute?
No single gloss exhausts the record. Orel glosses Old English hettan “hate” but Middle High German hetzen “pursue”; the attested enemy forms encode an antagonist, and Liberman argues for pursuit or persecution as an older concrete history.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Does DDO preserve the lost verbal meaning?
It preserves the historical analysis, not a productive modern Danish verb: the noun was originally a present participle of a verb corresponding to Old Norse fjá, hate or persecute.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Did fēogan mean only an inward emotion?
No. The dictionary glosses hate and persecute, while examples take people, crimes, evil, unjust ways, law, peace, and a temple as objects.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Does current hassen ordinarily mean physically persecute?
No. Duden’s current meanings center hatred and strong aversion. Pursuit and persecution belong to the historical semantic account, not a requirement of the current standard verb.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Could hata mean persecute?
Yes. ONP's first sense is persecute, and its Páls saga citation aligns er þu hatar with Latin quem tu persequeris. Fritzner gives the same passage under pursue.
CONTRARIAN TRUTHS / 3
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 43GRADE Aranked reveal
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.
RANK 57GRADE Aranked reveal
The verb disappeared from ordinary English; its prehistoric hater survived as fiend.
Old English fēogan meant hate or persecute and had a productive paradigm including feógende. The Germanic active-participial formation had already lexicalized as an enemy noun before the recorded branches. English therefore preserves the family most visibly not in its ordinary verb hate, but in fēond and modern fiend.
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BOOKS / DICTIONARIES / ARTICLES / DATABASES
SOURCES
No reviewed record in this collection contains “persecute.” Absence describes this graph, not all of linguistic scholarship.
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FIRST USES & HISTORICAL OBJECTS
ATTESTATION WITNESSES
No reviewed record in this collection contains “persecute.” Absence describes this graph, not all of linguistic scholarship.
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SEARCH IS DISCOVERY, NOT PROOF
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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.