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 LOCAL3 source sections across 2 headwords matching “Tong”. These are separate from the reviewed results below.
TongEnglish (en) · Unnumbered etymologySource text
For the surname: Borrowed from Cantonese 湯／汤 (tong1), Cantonese 唐 (tong4), Mandarin 佟 (Tóng), Mandarin 童 (Tóng), etc.
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗tongEnglish (en) · Etymology 1Source text
From Middle English tonge (“tongs, fang”), tange, from Old English tange, from Proto-West Germanic *tangu, from Proto-Germanic *tangō, from Proto-Indo-European *denḱ- (“to bite”). Cognate with Old Norse tǫng (modern Icelandic töng), Old High German zanga (modern German Zange). Other cognates include Sanskrit दशति (dáśati, “to bite”) and Albanian dang (“bite, nip”).
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗tongEnglish (en) · Etymology 2Source text
From Cantonese 堂 (tong⁴).
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 →012
MODERN ENTRY POINTS
WORD DOSSIERS
noun · adjective · verbcontrarian claim
taboo
An English borrowing recorded in 1777 from Tongan tabu, now tapu, within an Oceanic family whose reconstructed form joins ritual restriction with sacredness.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗stative · modifier · nouncontrarian claim
tapu
A Māori word for what is sacred, prohibited, restricted, set apart, or under atua protection, inherited within the wider Oceanic *tampu family.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗021
ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY
HISTORICAL FORMS
036
WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED
CLAIMS & DISPUTES
SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 4
resolvedestablishedposition text
Could hatia express theological hate?
Yes. Jurisprudentia Frisica says God especially hatien the perjurer, lying tongue, and false witnesses, as Solomon describes.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Did Hawaiian kapu directly give English taboo?
No. English taboo is traced to Tongan tabu. Hawaiian kapu is a cognate reflex whose resemblance reveals family history, not the borrowing event.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Did taboo originally mean only “forbidden”?
No. The Tongan reflexes and wider Oceanic reconstruction carry a semantic field that includes prohibited, under ritual restriction, sacred, holy, and consecrated.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Did English taboo come from Māori tapu?
No. Merriam-Webster identifies Tongan tabu as the English donor. Māori tapu is a related Oceanic reflex, not the borrowing source.
CONTRARIAN TRUTHS / 2
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 159GRADE Aranked reveal
It did not begin as merely “forbidden.”
Tongan and reconstructed Oceanic evidence joins prohibition and ritual restriction with sacredness and consecration.
040
BOOKS / DICTIONARIES / ARTICLES / DATABASES
SOURCES
No reviewed record in this collection contains “tong.” Absence describes this graph, not all of linguistic scholarship.
052
FIRST USES & HISTORICAL OBJECTS
ATTESTATION WITNESSES
SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Jurisprudentia Frisica
hatia / hatia / Codex Roorda manuscript dated 1490-1504; source-reported
Corpus Oudfries — hatia in Jurisprudentia Frisicawitness excerpt / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
eDIL citation from O'Curry manuscript material
cais / cais / date not normalized; source-reported
eDIL — 1 cais, noun explained as both love and hatewitness excerpt / 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.