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 1 headword matching “Splay”. These are separate from the reviewed results below.
splayEnglish (en) · Etymology 1Source text
PIE word *dwís The verb is derived from Middle English splaien, splayen (“to display; to spread out, unfurl (a flag, etc.); (cooking) to cut open (a fish) lengthwise and lay it open; (figurative) to appear; to spread”), an aphetic form of Middle English displaien, displayen (“to display”): see display. The adjective and adverb are derived from the verb, or from splayfoot (noun) or splayfooted (adjective). The noun is derived from the verb.
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗splayEnglish (en) · Etymology 2Source text
From Middle English splaien, splayen, a variant of spaien, spayen (“to remove the ovaries of (a female animal), spay; to stab or kill (an animal)”): see spay.
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 →019
MODERN ENTRY POINTS
WORD DOSSIERS
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 ↗English common noun and historical adjectivedossier summary
friend
English friend continues Middle English frẹ̄nd and Old English frēond, an inherited Germanic nd-stem agent noun. OED identifies cognates across West, East, and North Germanic and analyzes them as noun uses of a present participle of the Germanic base behind free; Bosworth–Toller explicitly calls Old English freónd the participle of freón, a verb meaning free or love; American Heritage independently explains the formation as originally one who loves. The historical noun later covers intimate companion, ally, supporter, relation, lover, form of address, Quaker, climbing device, and social-network contact. The graph displays a normalized *frijōnd- participial formation, Germanic *frī-, the proposed Indo-European comparison *prī-, and then stops.
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 High German strong masculine noundossier summary
fīant
Old High German fīant—written fîant and fîjant in the Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch's length-marking convention—was already a strong masculine noun meaning enemy, opponent, or adversary. The dictionary documents personal, public and military, spiritual, and specifically Devil senses across a large variant and inflectional record. Its most revealing evidence is grammatical: in fixed formulas, usually without an article, the old participial character could still shine through. Fîant uuesan could mean to be hostile, hate someone, or wish someone ill; fîant mahhôn meant make hostile, and zi fîante tuon could mean regard as an enemy or hate. The companion fîên article independently preserves the live weak verb to hate in eighth- and ninth-century Alemannic manuscripts. The noun therefore shows a lexical fossil whose older verbal force remained locally legible without ceasing to be a noun. The displayed pronunciation is an editorial normalized approximation, not a recorded historical audio object. All displayed Old High German passages are inspected dictionary or text-edition records, not directly inspected manuscript objects.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗Old Dutch masculine noundossier summary
fīunt
Old Dutch fīunt is the normalized headword behind a twenty-six-occurrence historical-dictionary record for enemy or opponent. ONW classifies the noun as synchronically unsegmented but says it was originally the present participle of the verb corresponding to Old High German fīēn and Gothic fijan, a verb no longer known in Dutch. Its frequency table preserves six case-number cells: nominative and genitive singular plus nominative, genitive, dative, and accusative plural. Those are not a complete paradigm. The article displays twenty representative location blocks after warning that locations in the semantic profile have been reduced. Most early Wachtendonck Psalms material is linguistically dated 901–1000 but survives in copies dated 1595–1605, circa 1598, or 1701–1800; no tenth-century manuscript object was inspected. One dfiunt or fiunt gloss aligned with Latin diabolus is textually disputed, and one Groningen psalm gloss is explicitly assigned to Old Frisian by the dictionary. This dossier therefore treats fīunt as a nominal fossil with a partially preserved inflectional record, not as a productive Old Dutch participle or a complete transparent paradigm.
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 Norse weak verbdossier summary
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 ↗noundossier summary
icon
An image, likeness, representative figure, or display symbol, borrowed through Late Latin from Greek eikōn.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗021
ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY
HISTORICAL FORMS
0313
WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED
CLAIMS & DISPUTES
SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 12
openproposedposition text
Does cais securely prove cognacy with the Germanic hate family?
No. The Celtic–Germanic comparison is serious enough to display, but the graph keeps it as a context link rather than a genealogical edge because formal and semantic acceptance remain unsettled.
openproposedposition text
Does fjende securely descend from exactly *peh₁-?
Only as a qualified modern proposal. The Germanic noun-and-verb relationship is firmer than the displayed Indo-European route.
openproposedposition text
Does fjá securely descend from exactly *peh₁-?
Only as a qualified modern proposal. The Germanic comparison is firmer than the displayed Indo-European route.
openproposedposition text
Does fjándi securely descend from exactly *peh₁-?
Only as a qualified modern proposal. The Germanic noun-and-verb relation is firmer than the displayed Indo-European route.
openproposedposition text
Does friend securely descend from exactly *prī-?
It is a published Indo-European comparison, not direct attestation. The Germanic and Old English stages are firmer than the deepest displayed root.
openprobableposition text
Can the exact Old Norse pronunciation be heard or uniquely recovered?
No. The displayed IPA is a normalized scholarly approximation; manuscript spelling and comparative phonology cannot reproduce one recorded medieval voice.
openprobableposition text
Can the exact pronunciation of frēond be heard or uniquely recovered?
No. The displayed IPA is a normalized scholarly approximation across written dialect evidence, not one recorded Old English voice.
openprobableposition text
Is fēogan a strong verb or a weak contracted verb?
Bosworth–Toller labels the full FEÓGAN entry strong, but labels linked contracted feón weak and contracted. The displayed past forms in -de also require grammatical explanation. The dossier preserves the source-level tension rather than silently harmonizing it.
openproposedposition text
Does fīant securely descend from exactly *peh₁-?
Only as a qualified modern proposal. The Germanic noun-and-verb relation is firmer than the displayed Indo-European route.
openproposedposition text
Does fīunt securely descend from exactly *peh₁-?
Only as a qualified proposal. The Germanic noun-and-verb relationship is firmer than the displayed Indo-European route, whose notation and semantic framing vary.
openproposedposition text
Does fīēn securely descend from exactly *peh₁-?
Only as a qualified modern proposal. The Germanic comparison is firmer than the displayed Indo-European route.
openproposedposition text
Does hata securely descend from exactly *ḱeh₂d-?
Only as a qualified proposal. The Germanic comparison is firmer than the displayed Indo-European route, whose semantic members are far from transparent.
CONTRARIAN TRUTHS / 1
RANK 8GRADE Aranked reveal
Etymology calls itself the “true account.”
Greek ἔτυμος “true, real” joined -λογία “account or study”; even that truth-word reaches a reconstructed root.
040
BOOKS / DICTIONARIES / ARTICLES / DATABASES
SOURCES
No reviewed record in this collection contains “splay.” Absence describes this graph, not all of linguistic scholarship.
050
FIRST USES & HISTORICAL OBJECTS
ATTESTATION WITNESSES
No reviewed record in this collection contains “splay.” Absence describes this graph, not all of linguistic scholarship.
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.