SEARCH THE GRAPH.

aguacate

The Spanish word for the avocado tree and fruit, borrowed from Nahuatl āhuacatl, whose historical records include both fruit and testicle senses.

algorism

The older English word for calculation with Hindu-Arabic numerals, transmitted through French and Medieval Latin from the name al-Khwārizmī.

algorithm

A finite or stepwise procedure, descended through medieval arithmetic vocabulary from the Latinized name of al-Khwārizmī.

avocado

An English reshaping of Spanish aguacate from Nahuatl āhuacatl, a word documented with both avocado and testicle senses.

noundossier summary

English bayou, recorded by 1763, came from Louisiana French bayouque. An early Choctaw *bayok is a plausible proposed source, but the historical form and its alleged contraction to modern bók are not securely attested.

noun · verbdossier summary

boomerang

An Aboriginal Australian borrowing recorded in English by 1824. Dharug and Dharawal forms have been proposed, but the Australian National Dictionary Centre says the exact source language remains uncertain.

bride

A woman about to be or recently married; inherited from Old English brȳd and directly preserved inside bridegroom.

calculus

A mathematical system, a method of reasoning, or a bodily stone; borrowed from a Latin word for a pebble used in counting.

chai

In current English, a South Asian-style tea commonly prepared with milk and spices; the word belongs to the overland cha/chay transmission family ultimately derived from Chinese 茶.

verb · nounhistorical form

checkmate

An inescapable chess defeat and, figuratively, complete thwarting; a compound transmitted through French, Arabic, and Persian chess language.

noun · verbcontrarian claim

clue

A fact that guides discovery—once literally a ball of thread.

conscience

The moral sense or awareness of one's conduct, inherited through medieval French from the Latin knowing-family.

Proto-Indo-European / Indo-European

ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY

HISTORICAL FORMS

*skei-

cut, split; proposed source of a discern > know development

DATE: Proto-Indo-European prehistory
MATCH: gloss
DOSSIERS: 7

Palaeo-Germanic / Indo-European

*stagh-ná-

pile or stack; proposed source of a stone-pile stove term

DATE: Palaeo-Germanic reconstruction
MATCH: gloss
DOSSIERS: 1

Classical Arabic / Afro-Asiatic

Khwārizm

Khwārizm, a region south of the Aral Sea

DATE: early medieval and older geographic record
MATCH: gloss
DOSSIERS: 2

Dharawal / Pama-Nyungan

bou-mar-rang

returning boomerang; proposed source candidate

DATE: Dharawal source candidate
MATCH: gloss
DOSSIERS: 0

Dharug / Pama-Nyungan

bumarin

missile or club; proposed source of boomerang

DATE: Dharug source candidate
MATCH: gloss
DOSSIERS: 1

Present-Day English / Indo-European

etymon

an earlier source form, foreign donor, or derivational base

DATE: 1573–today
MATCH: gloss
DOSSIERS: 1

Ancient Greek / Indo-European

kêdos

source transliteration of κῆδος, not a separate Ancient Greek lexeme

DATE: modern scholarly Latin-script representation of Ancient Greek
MATCH: gloss
DOSSIERS: 0

Middle English / Indo-European

lesson / lessoun

a reading, assigned text, or unit of instruction

DATE: Middle English, 13th–15th centuries
MATCH: gloss
DOSSIERS: 1

Present-Day English / Indo-European

llama

the South American camelid

DATE: 1600–today
MATCH: gloss
DOSSIERS: 1

Quechua source (variety unspecified) / Quechuan

llama

llama; Lama glama

DATE: Quechua historical and modern record
MATCH: language
DOSSIERS: 1

Eastern Algonquian source (variety unresolved) / Algic

mos / moos

moose

DATE: Eastern Algonquian source; variety unresolved
MATCH: language
DOSSIERS: 1

1 CITATIONS / AUDIT ↗December DOSSIER ↗

Spanish / Indo-European

pocho / poncho

faded, discolored; proposed source family for the garment word

DATE: historical Spanish candidate
MATCH: gloss
DOSSIERS: 0

WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED

CLAIMS & DISPUTES

SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 12

openprobableposition text

Did English receive December through Old English or French?

The reviewed source allows either Old English or Anglo-French transmission from Latin and does not choose between them.

openprobableposition text

Was the relative sense inherited or independently strengthened in Germanic branches?

The sources establish the sense across German and Nordic evidence but do not recover one complete prehistoric semantic tree.

1 CITATIONS / AUDIT ↗Freund DOSSIER ↗

openboundaryposition text

Can aguacate be securely pushed deeper than āhuacatl?

Not from the reviewed sources. The institutional dictionaries reach the Nahuatl word and its historical witnesses but do not establish a deeper lexical ancestor.

2 CITATIONS / AUDIT ↗aguacate DOSSIER ↗

openprobableposition text

Did English algorism arrive through French or directly from Medieval Latin?

The sources preserve both channels. Merriam-Webster names Middle French and Medieval Latin; Etymonline emphasizes Old French from Medieval Latin.

2 CITATIONS / AUDIT ↗algorism DOSSIER ↗

openprobableposition text

Does the English record begin in the 13th or 15th century?

The reviewed source reports differ. Etymonline gives mid-thirteenth-century arsmetike; Merriam-Webster gives a fifteenth-century first-known-use horizon.

2 CITATIONS / AUDIT ↗arithmetic DOSSIER ↗

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.

2 CITATIONS / AUDIT ↗bayou DOSSIER ↗

openproposedposition text

Which Aboriginal language supplied boomerang?

Dharug bumarin and a Dharawal bou-mar-rang form are published candidates, but the Australian National Dictionary Centre says the exact source language remains uncertain.

3 CITATIONS / AUDIT ↗boomerang DOSSIER ↗

openprobableposition text

What securely precedes Old English brȳd?

The sources publish broad Germanic comparanda, including Old High German brūt, but this dossier does not yet have a reviewed source that warrants one reconstructed parent.

2 CITATIONS / AUDIT ↗bride DOSSIER ↗

openproposedposition text

Did love develop into hate, hate into love, or both from another meaning?

No reviewed source establishes one direction. The citations show an opposition; they do not date a semantic transition.

2 CITATIONS / AUDIT ↗cais DOSSIER ↗

openproposedposition text

Is calculus securely a diminutive of calx “limestone”?

Not securely. The traditional analysis is morphologically and semantically irregular; an alternative links Latin calculus and Greek stone words through a possible shared substrate source.

2 CITATIONS / AUDIT ↗calculate DOSSIER ↗

openproposedposition text

Does calculator securely descend beyond Latin calculus to calx?

The calculator-to-calculare-to-calculus chain is established, but the traditional calculus-to-calx derivation is proposed. A possible shared Mediterranean substrate source remains a competing route.

2 CITATIONS / AUDIT ↗calculator DOSSIER ↗

openproposedposition text

Could Latin calculus and Greek káchlēx share a non-Indo-European source?

Yes, as a proposal. Beekes' substrate diagnostics for Greek variants motivate a possible common source, but no form is securely reconstructed.

1 CITATIONS / AUDIT ↗calculus DOSSIER ↗

CONTRARIAN TRUTHS / 12

RANK 9GRADE Aranked reveal

The most repeated origin story is not the most rigorous answer.

Mapuche ancestry is a serious, evidenced proposal—but current RAE and a historical Spanish argument keep the deeper source genuinely open.

3 CITATIONS / AUDIT ↗poncho DOSSIER ↗

RANK 19GRADE Acontrarian claim

The x of rēx is a whole nominative sound change in one letter.

Latin starts from the bound stem rēg-, adds nominative -s, devoices g to k, and writes the resulting /ks/ as x. Genitive rēgis makes the stem visible—but it is a sibling case form, not an ancestor.

3 CITATIONS / AUDIT ↗rēx DOSSIER ↗

RANK 46GRADE Aranked reveal

Old High German hazzōn is a paradigm fault line, not proof that hate originally meant pursue.

The clean dictionary headword conceals paired ēn and ōn forms: Starling reports hazzēn in the eighth century and hazzōn in the ninth, Duden prints haʒʒēn and haʒʒōn, and the UT reflex index also records hazēn and hazōn. Corpus-wide research confirms that Old High German ēn verbs can show ōn double forms. DWB reports aemulari and insequi alignments that support emulation, following, or hostile pursuit—but Pokorny’s comparative warning is exact: Germanic evidence does not prove that pursue was the root’s basic meaning. The normalized form, the source-reported tokens, the paradigm analysis, and the prehistoric semantic claim are four different evidence layers.

6 CITATIONS / AUDIT ↗hazzōn DOSSIER ↗

RANK 50GRADE Aranked reveal

The hostile adjective may belong to whet and threat, not hate—and its starred lemma still has a nominative.

Köbler's Old Saxon entry reports five written readings at three Heliand loci, including nominative hotie, huotia, and huoti, yet heads the entry hōti*. The asterisk therefore cannot be explained away as “no nominative survives.” More radically, the sources split at the root. UT groups hōti with hatōn and heti under the inherited hate etymon k̑ād-. Köbler's same entry cross-references hatōn but reconstructs a different *hwōtja- adjective beside *hwōtō “threat” and Pokorny's *kʷē̆d- / *kʷō̆d- family of boring, pricking, sharpening, whetting, and inciting. Munich hotie and hotean are directly visible in contexts of hostile minds and hostile intent; Cotton huotia, huotian, and huoti remain source-reported. The unveiling is not “hostility secretly means sharpened hate.” It is that rigorous etymology sometimes reveals two irreconcilable maps where a flat dictionary would print one arrow.

6 CITATIONS / AUDIT ↗hōti DOSSIER ↗

RANK 51GRADE Aranked reveal

Care, grief, funerals, and in-laws occupy one Greek noun—but hate does not secretly mean care.

LSJ's κῆδος entry moves through care and concern, anxiety and grief, troubles, mourning and funeral rites, an object of care, and connection by marriage. Homeric κήδεʼ can be many-troubled woes; Aeschylus can make Helen an object of care while playing on marriage affinity. Comparative sources then place the noun beside Celtic and Germanic hatred words under *ḱh₂d-es- and *ḱeh₂d-. The reveal is not a mystical reversal in which hate “really” means care. Merriam-Webster calls the semantic relations far from transparent, Liberman challenges the wider family's unity, and the Greek evidence itself resists a single linear story.

7 CITATIONS / AUDIT ↗κῆδος DOSSIER ↗

RANK 56GRADE Aranked reveal

The Old English friend was a loving-agent noun—but not merely a modern intimate.

OED and Bosworth–Toller preserve the morphology behind frēond: an inherited nd-stem formation tied to the verb meaning free or love. The same sources then refuse a slogan-sized definition. Old English uses cover close companion, ally or non-enemy, relation, friend of God, friend versus foe, and friends acting as arbitrators. Cotton MS Vitellius A XV folio 152r visibly preserves freondum in a hall filled with favored people at Beowulf 1018. The unveiling is not that friend secretly means love in every sentence; it is that a loving-agent fossil became a socially versatile noun before modern English existed.

5 CITATIONS / AUDIT ↗frēond DOSSIER ↗

RANK 61GRADE Aranked reveal

Its most famous behavior is not universal—and even its exact donor language is unsettled.

Many hunting and fighting boomerangs do not return. Dharug and Dharawal sources have been proposed, while ANU keeps the exact language unresolved.

3 CITATIONS / AUDIT ↗boomerang DOSSIER ↗

RANK 62GRADE Aranked reveal

Prescient is a knowing word, not a seeing word.

Latin prae- plus scīre means to know beforehand. Modern “foresight” is a semantic description, not evidence of a sight-based ancestry.

3 CITATIONS / AUDIT ↗prescient DOSSIER ↗

RANK 73GRADE Aranked reveal

Algorithm is the altered version; algorism came first.

The word began in al-Khwārizmī's geographic name. Greek arithmos later helped put “th” into algorithm without becoming its ancestor.

2 CITATIONS / AUDIT ↗algorism DOSSIER ↗

RANK 77GRADE Acontrarian claim

Same sound, same object, different ancestry.

Turkish kayık reaches Old Turkic kayguk; kayak reaches Inuit qayaq. Their uncanny agreement is chance resemblance, not evidence of contact or a common root.

2 CITATIONS / AUDIT ↗kayık DOSSIER ↗

RANK 81GRADE Aranked reveal

The etymon is not always the root of the root.

In technical use an etymon may be an earlier form, a foreign loan source, or a derivational word or morpheme—not necessarily the deepest reachable ancestor.

2 CITATIONS / AUDIT ↗etymon DOSSIER ↗

RANK 84GRADE Acontrarian claim

Even the source-form can wear an asterisk.

French lexicography defines an étymon as attested or reconstructed/hypothetical. The unit used to explain a word’s history is not automatically a surviving word.

2 CITATIONS / AUDIT ↗étymon DOSSIER ↗

BOOKS / DICTIONARIES / ARTICLES / DATABASES

SOURCES

digital scholarly edition10 CLAIM LINKS

Archivum Gothicum: Edition of the Gothic Sources, Volume 1

Carla Falluomini · Pierandrea Gottardi / 2026

historical dictionary10 CLAIM LINKS

Ubuntu, noun

Dictionary of South African English Editors

author or editorAUDIT EVERY USE ↗

historical dictionary7 CLAIM LINKS

CNRTL / TLFi: législation — Étymologie et histoire

Centre national de ressources textuelles et lexicales Editors

author or editorAUDIT EVERY USE ↗

historical dictionary7 CLAIM LINKS

Étymologique — Trésor de la langue française informatisé

ATILF · CNRS · Université de Lorraine / 2012

scholarly reference6 CLAIM LINKS

Lecture 23: Historical Linguistics — Latin rēx, rēgis, and sound change

Norvin W. Richards / 2022

historical dictionary6 CLAIM LINKS

Étymon — Trésor de la langue française informatisé

ATILF · CNRS · Université de Lorraine / 2012

etymological dictionary5 CLAIM LINKS

An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language — hetzen

Friedrich Kluge · translated by John Francis Davis / 1891

digitized scholarly edition5 CLAIM LINKS

Beowulf: an Anglo-Saxon poem — glossary entry hatian

James A. Harrison · Robert Sharp / 1893

historical dictionary4 CLAIM LINKS

Jaguar — étymologie

Centre national de ressources textuelles et lexicales

author or editorAUDIT EVERY USE ↗

scholarly article3 CLAIM LINKS

*t to k: An Austronesian Sound Change Revisited

Robert A. Blust / 2004

digitized scholarly edition3 CLAIM LINKS

An Anglo-Saxon Reader — The Phœnix

James W. Bright, editor / 1913

dataset documentation1 CLAIM LINKS

Söderwall: Ordbok öfver svenska medeltids-språket — resource metadata

Språkbanken Text

FIRST USES & HISTORICAL OBJECTS

ATTESTATION WITNESSES

Calculus — Word History and Etymology Notewitness-title prefix / OPEN RECORD ↗

Source-reported Latin lexical record

calculus / calculate / Latin antiquity

Earliest Known Uses of Some of the Words of Mathematics: Awitness-title prefix / OPEN RECORD ↗

Source-reported title phrase in al-Khwārizmī's mathematical work

al-jabr / algebra / c. 825

SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record

Soul’s enemy example

fēond / fēond / Old English, source-reported

An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Online — feóndwitness-title prefix / OPEN RECORD ↗

Earliest Known Uses of Some of the Words of Mathematics: Awitness-title prefix / OPEN RECORD ↗

Source-reported English record for the algorithm spelling

algorithm / algorithm / 1699

Robot — Word Historywitness-title prefix / OPEN RECORD ↗

Source-reported coinage context in R.U.R.

robota / robot / 1920

DIRECTLY INSPECTEDprinted book

The PESTE entry in the first edition of the Académie française dictionary uses quarantaine for imposed isolation after travel from a place suspected of plague.

quarantaine / quarantine / 1694

Le dictionnaire de l'Académie française. Tome 2 (M–Z), première éditionwitness excerpt / OPEN RECORD ↗

DIRECTLY INSPECTEDprinted book

John Harris’s NOTES in Musick entry describes a fixed group of six select syllables formerly used to distinguish degrees of sound.

select / select / 1704

Lexicon technicum: or, an universal English dictionary of arts and sciencesreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗

Law — Word Historyreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗

Merriam-Webster source-reported Old English record

lagu / law / before the 12th century

Salt — Definition, Word History, and First Known Usereporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗

Merriam-Webster source-reported Old English record

sealt / salt / before the 12th century

Lay — Definition, Word History, and First Known Usereporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗

Merriam-Webster source-reported Old English record

lecgan / lay / before the 12th century

Calculator — Definition, Word History, and First Known Usereporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗

Merriam-Webster source-reported Middle English record

calculator / calculator / 14th century