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 LOCAL1 source section across 1 headword matching “Rot”. These are separate from the reviewed results below.
rotEnglish (en) · Unnumbered etymologySource text
Inherited from Middle English roten, rotten, from Old English rotian (“to rot, become corrupted, ulcerate, putrefy”), from Proto-West Germanic *rotēn, from Proto-Germanic *rutāną (“to rot”).
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 →0112
MODERN ENTRY POINTS
WORD DOSSIERS
onomastic compound elementdossier summary
-rīx
An attested Gaulish second member meaning “king” or “prince,” visible in compound personal names such as Dumnorix and Vercingetorix and inherited from Proto-Celtic *rīx-s.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nounhistorical form
algebra
A mathematical discipline whose English name travels through Medieval Latin from Arabic al-jabr, restoration or completion.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗verbcontrarian claim
betroth
To promise in marriage; a Middle English prefixed formation built on the same historical noun that yielded truth and troth.
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 ↗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 ↗Gothic masculine nd-stem common nouncontrarian claim
fijands
A Gothic masculine nd-stem noun conventionally glossed enemy. Project Wulfila currently exposes 26 candidates: three verified noun assignments, two further noun-only assignments, and 21 surface forms also listed under the living verb fijan. Ayora Estevan explains the collision diachronically: Proto-Germanic had already lexicalized the present-participial *fi(j)and- as enemy, while Gothic retained productive one-who-hates participles beside the noun. The five noun-only candidates use fiand, fijands, fijande, and fijandis; all five were inspected in Codex Argenteus facsimiles.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗Old Norse verbdossier summary
fjá
Old Norse fjá was a verb meaning to hate. The Dictionary of Old Norse Prose classifies it as poetic and exposes zero prose citations; its glossarium links point to the early form fía and the reconstructed Proto-Germanic *fi(j)ēn-. Cleasby and Vigfússon call the verb obsolete, compare Gothic fijan and Old English feon or fjan, and locate it in Hýmiskviða 22 and Lokasenna 35, with the reflexive fjásk in Skírnismál 33. Fritzner independently gives the same three locations. The normalized verse texts preserve three different grammatical surfaces: goð fjá in Hýmiskviða, mangi fíár in Lokasenna, and Freyr fiásk in Skírnismál. Lexicon Poeticum likewise reports three poetic records, but explicitly warns that its concordance is unreviewed and that dates should be checked. These are source-reported lexical and edited-text records, not directly inspected manuscript objects, and three records in the reviewed poetic concordance are not a census of every Old Norse utterance. The finite verb became a tiny poetic fossil while its inherited participial relative fjándi became the ordinary enemy noun and accumulated 222 citations in ONP's prose corpus. Those corpus totals are not directly frequency-comparable, but the contrast makes the grammatical survival visible. The generated possible runic inscription shown by modern dictionary transcriptions is not historical evidence and is excluded. No historical sound recording exists, so the dossier does not fabricate one exact pronunciation.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗Old Norse masculine noundossier summary
frændi
Old Norse frændi belongs to the same inherited Germanic present-participial family as English friend, German Freund, and Dutch vriend, but cognacy did not freeze one meaning. The Dictionary of Old Norse Prose structures 225 citations into friend; foster brother or companion; kinsman, relative, or son; parents; and ancestor, while warning that the friend and kin divisions are not sharp. Cleasby and Vigfússon call the Scandinavian semantic specialization striking and treat kinsman as the ordinary center; Zoëga likewise gives kinsman, brother, son, and ancestor. Fritzner preserves the historical formation as a participle of frjá and compares the West and East Germanic friend words. The graph joins frændi directly to the same reviewed *frijōnd-, *frī-, and proposed *prī- nodes as friend, Freund, and vriend, then stops. The displayed pronunciation is a normalized approximation, not recorded medieval audio.
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 ↗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 High German weak verbdossier summary
fīēn
Old High German fīēn—printed fîên in the Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch—was a weak verb meaning to hate, not love, be hostile to, detest, or reject. The official dictionary says it is attested only in Alemannic manuscripts of the eighth and ninth centuries, then inventories an infinitive fien, present participle fiendi, second-person singular preterite fietos, and accusative plural masculine past participle fieta. Three rule-text records concern hating discipline, one’s own will, or no person; gloss records align the participial forms with Latin exosus or exosos; and an Esther gloss aligns fien with detestari. These are source-reported edition and dictionary records, not directly inspected manuscript objects, and the broad manuscript horizon does not identify one exact first token. A separate twelfth-century article printed fien [sic] with the gloss ubere is explicitly left uninterpreted by the dictionary and is not merged into this hate verb. Beside the verb, Old High German had the already lexicalized enemy noun fīant, whose old participial character could still shine through in fixed phrases. The graph therefore shows a living daughter verb beside a grammatical fossil without pretending that either attested form is the reconstructed Proto-Germanic word itself. No historical sound recording exists and the dossier does not display a fabricated phonetic certainty.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗Old Frisian weak verbcontrarian claim
hatia
Old Frisian hatia is a weak verb whose lexicographic field extends beyond an inward feeling. Hofmann and Popkema give hate or reject, damage, and a feud-language expression for harming or pursuing someone as an enemy. A May 2026 Corpus Oudfries search for word or lemma hatia returns six records in 235,462 tokens, but those are not six instances of this verb. Buma's critical note on Brokmer B 101 explicitly identifies its written hatia as atia "rear" with prothetic h, and Nijdam translates the passage as a poor mother being unable to feed her children. That token is excluded from the hate lineage. The five relevant corpus records occur in legal, road, family, and theological contexts: forms hatijen, hatie, hata, and hatien can concern harming or hindering on a road, a writing or event going against someone, or God hating perjury, lying speech, and false witnesses. The current corpus count is a bounded research surface, not a frequency estimate for medieval speech or a claim about every surviving witness. The underlying manuscripts were not directly inspected for this dossier, no earliest-use claim is made, and no exact historical pronunciation is invented.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗0212
ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY
HISTORICAL FORMS
*
Proto-Indo-European / Indo-European
*(dh)ghm̥-on-
earthling; human being
- DATE
- Proto-Indo-European suffixed zero-grade formation
- MATCH
- language
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Proto-Indo-European / Indo-European
*(dh)ghom-o-
earth; ground
- DATE
- Proto-Indo-European suffixed o-grade formation
- MATCH
- language
- DOSSIERS
- 4
Proto-Indo-European / Indo-European
*(dh)ghom-on-
earthling; human being
- DATE
- Proto-Indo-European suffixed formation
- MATCH
- language
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Proto-Indo-European / Indo-European
*(s)kend-
to shine or make shine
- DATE
- Proto-Indo-European prehistory
- MATCH
- language
- DOSSIERS
- 2
Proto-Germanic / Indo-European
*-inga- / *-unga-
person associated with or belonging to a lineage
- DATE
- Proto-Germanic
- MATCH
- language
- DOSSIERS
- 0
Proto-Indo-European / Indo-European
*ad-
to, near, at
- DATE
- Proto-Indo-European horizon
- MATCH
- language
- DOSSIERS
- 0
Proto-Siouan / Siouan
*ahtí•
dwell, dwelling, house
- DATE
- Proto-Siouan prehistory
- MATCH
- language
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Proto-Indo-European / Indo-European
*bher-
to carry or bear
- DATE
- Proto-Indo-European prehistory
- MATCH
- language
- DOSSIERS
- 0
Proto-Indo-European / Indo-European
*bheuhₓ-
to be; exist; grow
- DATE
- oldest Proto-Indo-European form
- MATCH
- language
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Proto-Indo-European / Indo-European
*bheuə-
to be; exist; grow
- DATE
- Proto-Indo-European root
- MATCH
- language
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Proto-Indo-European / Indo-European
*bhōw-
to live; dwell
- DATE
- Proto-Indo-European lengthened o-grade
- MATCH
- language
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Proto-Germanic / Indo-European
*bōwan
to dwell; live
- DATE
- Proto-Germanic
- MATCH
- language
- DOSSIERS
- 1
0324
WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED
CLAIMS & DISPUTES
SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 12
openprobableposition text
Is the exact phonetic shape of *fi(j)and- directly known?
No. The form is a comparative reconstruction. Optional j notation, branch vowels, and the relation of written historical variants require analysis rather than direct Proto-Germanic observation.
openprobableposition text
Can the exact Proto-Germanic pronunciation and paradigm be recovered?
Not completely. Comparative forms support the morphology, but no recording or written Proto-Germanic paradigm survives.
openprobableposition text
Is the exact Proto-Germanic noun *hatiz- or *hataz?
The noun is reconstructed, and published notation reflects stem alternation and analytical choices. Koch prints *hataz ~ *hatiz- while Merriam-Webster foregrounds *hatiz-.
openprobableposition text
Is betroth built on truth or troth?
The historical base is Middle English trouth or trouthe, where the modern truth and troth spellings were not yet cleanly separated; mapping it to only one modern headword overstates the evidence.
openproposedposition text
Is Proto-Celtic *katsi- the secure direct parent of cais?
Koch publishes the comparison, but the reviewed materials do not expose a complete dated Goidelic derivation or independent consensus sufficient to mark the edge established.
openprobableposition text
Can the exact Proto-Germanic pronunciation and lexicalization moment be recovered?
No. *fi(j)and- and *fi(j)ēn- are normalized comparative reconstructions; optional j, branch vowels, and the timing of lexicalization remain analytical.
openprobableposition text
Is fijands an ordinary participle or a lexical noun meaning enemy?
Both categories exist historically and synchronically. Ayora Estevan derives the noun from a Proto-Germanic lexicalized present participle, then shows Gothic still using fi(j)ands as the productive participle one who hates. Token-level syntax and inflection sometimes distinguish them; many surface forms do not.
openprobableposition text
Is fijands just an ordinary Gothic present participle?
No single category covers the evidence. Ayora Estevan derives the enemy noun from a Proto-Germanic lexicalized participle while also showing that Gothic retained productive present-participial uses of the same formation.
openprobableposition text
Can the exact Proto-Germanic pronunciation and lexicalization moment be recovered?
No. *fi(j)and- and *fi(j)ēn- are normalized comparative reconstructions; optional j, branch vowels, and the moment the agent became an ordinary noun remain analytical.
openprobableposition text
Can the exact Proto-Germanic pronunciation and inflection be recovered?
Not completely. OED reconstructs vowel contraction and formal variation, but no recording or written Proto-Germanic paradigm survives.
openprobableposition text
Can the exact Proto-Germanic pronunciation and full paradigm be recovered?
Not completely. Comparative evidence supports the nd-participial morphology, but no written paradigm or recording survives.
openprobableposition text
Does freondum at Beowulf 1018 identify every person as a modern intimate friend?
No. The local text says Heorot was filled with freondum, but the manuscript alone does not recover each referent’s exact social relationship or a modern intimacy category.
CONTRARIAN TRUTHS / 12
RANK 18GRADE Aranked reveal
The famous Gaulish ending is -rīx, not decorative -ix.
Cambridge identifies Gaulish -rix /-rīxs/ “king” inside Dumnorix and Vercingetorix and derives it from Proto-Celtic *rīx-s. The r belongs to the historical element; the exact force of that element still varies across individual names.
RANK 33GRADE Aranked reveal
Enemy is a fossilized hater—but lexicalization does not make every token transparent.
Project Wulfila lists 26 candidates under the Gothic enemy noun and 42 under the verb fijan; exactly 21 surface tokens belong to both inventories. Ayora Estevan explains why: Proto-Germanic had already lexicalized one who hates as enemy, while Gothic retained the productive participle. The five noun-only tokens are directly inspected; the 21-token overlap remains public instead of being counted twice as certainty.
RANK 41GRADE Aranked reveal
The enemy fossil and the living hate verb coexisted in Old High German.
AWB records fîên as a weak verb only in eighth- and ninth-century Alemannic manuscripts, but the pocket preserves an infinitive, present participle, preterite, and past participle across hate, hostility, detestation, and rejection. Beside it, fîant was already a strong masculine enemy noun whose old participial character could still shine through in fixed phrases. Old High German therefore preserves both sides of the history at once: the live verbal family and the noun already lexicalized from it. The evidence reveals a grammatical relationship, not the psychology of every enemy and not a securely recovered Proto-Indo-European essence.
RANK 44GRADE Aranked reveal
One corpus hit written hatia is not the hate verb at all.
The May 2026 Corpus Oudfries search returns six records under word or lemma hatia, but spelling alone creates a trap. In Brokmer B 101, Buma explicitly identifies hatia as atia "rear" with prothetic h; Nijdam's translation confirms a poor mother unable to feed her children. That token is excluded from the hate lineage. The five relevant records then reveal the genuine verb's own range: harm or hindrance on an army road, legal adversity, and God hating perjury, lying speech, and false witnesses. The contrarian truth is therefore philological twice over: one identical surface belongs elsewhere, while the inherited verb itself extends beyond private feeling.
RANK 49GRADE Aranked reveal
The token is attested even though the dictionary headword wears an asterisk.
Köbler heads the Old Saxon noun hėti* but lists written accusative and dative heti plus genitive hetias beneath it. The exact Munich Heliand token is directly visible in the clause rîkioro manno heti endi harmquidi. The dictionary count three also hides a second distinction: it means three lexical loci, while Heliand 1322 survives with M, C, and V readings, producing five reported witness readings across the dossier. The star therefore belongs to an editorial headword layer; it does not erase the attested surface or turn Old Saxon into Proto-Germanic. The visible Heliand context is endured hostility or persecution, while the Saxon Confession groups hetias with malice, envy, and slander. Even the inherited grammar stays open: Fulk and Köbler use an i-stem analysis, whereas Pfeifer calls the wider noun an old es/os-stem.
RANK 55GRADE Aranked reveal
frændi is friend’s cognate—but kinship became its Old Norse center.
The Germanic family did not carry one frozen dictionary definition into every daughter language. OED places Old Icelandic frændi beside English friend; Cleasby–Vigfússon and Fritzner preserve the old participial analysis; ONP then exposes what happened in use. Its 225 citations distinguish friend, foster brother or companion, kinsman or son, parents, and ancestor, with no sharp wall between friend and kin. The unveiling is semantic divergence backed by a shared graph: English centers chosen companion, while the Scandinavian cognate centers family without ceasing to be cognate.
RANK 63GRADE Aranked reveal
Its root is deeper than the English stereotype.
English tipi continues Dakota thípi, built on “dwell,” and the root compares through two intermediate reconstructions to Proto-Siouan *ahtí•.
RANK 76GRADE Aranked reveal
The perfect-looking boat cognate is false.
Greenlandic qajaq and Turkish kayık resemble one another and name similar craft, but their documented prehistories separate into Proto-Eskimo and Old Turkic.
RANK 101GRADE Acontrarian claim
To betroth is to bind by one’s truth or troth.
Middle English bitrouthen visibly combines bi-/be- with trouth, the historical fidelity noun before modern truth and troth were cleanly separated.
RANK 110GRADE Aranked reveal
Irish rí and Latin rēx are cousins, not copies.
Old Irish rí and genitive ríg descend from Proto-Celtic *rīx-s and *rīg-os, while Latin rēx follows the parallel Italic branch.
RANK 145GRADE Aranked reveal
English taboo did not come from Māori tapu.
Māori tapu and English taboo meet deeper in the Oceanic family. English borrowed the Tongan reflex; Māori independently preserves sacredness, prohibition, restriction, and atua protection.
RANK 154GRADE Acontrarian claim
Truth and troth were once one word family in plain sight.
Middle English trouth and Old English trēowþ covered truth, faith, loyalty, and pledged fidelity before the modern words specialized.
048
BOOKS / DICTIONARIES / ARTICLES / DATABASES
SOURCES
etymological dictionary88 CLAIM LINKS
Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic — *fi(j)ēn- and *fi(j)and-
Guus Kroonen / 2013
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗scholarly dictionary20 CLAIM LINKS
Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic
Guus Kroonen / 2013
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗monograph13 CLAIM LINKS
The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World
J. P. Mallory & D. Q. Adams / 2006
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗comparative database12 CLAIM LINKS
Proto-Germanic *xatiz, *xatōn-, -ēn- and *xatjan-
StarLing database editors
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary9 CLAIM LINKS
Betroth — American Heritage Dictionary
American Heritage Dictionary Editors / 2022
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary7 CLAIM LINKS
Betroth — Definition, Word History, and First Known Use
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary7 CLAIM LINKS
Troth — American Heritage Dictionary
American Heritage Dictionary Editors / 2022
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary4 CLAIM LINKS
Troth — Definition, Word History, and First Known Use
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗056
FIRST USES & HISTORICAL OBJECTS
ATTESTATION WITNESSES
DIRECTLY INSPECTEDmanuscript
Beowulf manuscript, Heorot filled with friends
frēond / frēond / late 10th or early 11th century
Cotton MS Vitellius A XV, folio 152r — Electronic Beowulf facsimilewitness excerpt / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexicographic first use
Merriam-Webster first-known-use report for troth
troth / troth / 12th century
Troth — Definition, Word History, and First Known Usereporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexicographic first use
Merriam-Webster first-known-use report for betroth
betroth / betroth / 14th century
Betroth — Definition, Word History, and First Known Usereporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Beowulf, Heorot filled with friends
frēond / friend / Old English, source-reported
Oxford English Dictionary — friend, n. & adj.witness excerpt / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Jónsbók, the nearest relative as heir
frændi / frændi / manuscript dated circa 1360–1400 by ONP
Dictionary of Old Norse Prose — frǽndi, masculine nounwitness excerpt / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Andréss saga postula, foster-brother variant
frændi / frændi / Old Norse prose corpus; manuscript date unresolved in ONP record
Dictionary of Old Norse Prose — frǽndi, masculine nounreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗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.