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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 LOCAL2 source sections across 1 headword matching “Where”. These are separate from the reviewed results below.
whereEnglish (en) · Unnumbered etymologySource text
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *kʷ- Proto-Indo-European *kʷís Proto-Germanic *hwaz Proto-Indo-European *-r Proto-Germanic *-r Proto-Germanic *hwar Proto-West Germanic *hwār Old English hwǣr Middle English wher English where From Middle English wher, from Old English hwǣr (“where”, literally “at what place”), from Proto-West Germanic *hwār, from Proto-Germanic *hwar (“where”), from Proto-Indo-European *kʷ- (interrogative pronoun).
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗whereEnglish (en) · Unnumbered etymologySource text
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *kʷ- Proto-Indo-European *kʷís Proto-Germanic *hwaz Proto-Indo-European *-r Proto-Germanic *-r Proto-Germanic *hwar Proto-West Germanic *hwār Old English hwǣr Middle English wher English where From Middle English wher, from Old English hwǣr (“where”, literally “at what place”), from Proto-West Germanic *hwār, from Proto-Germanic *hwar (“where”), from Proto-Indo-European *kʷ- (interrogative pronoun).
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 →016
MODERN ENTRY POINTS
WORD DOSSIERS
noun and adjectivehistorical form
dairy
Milk, milk products, or a place and enterprise devoted to them; historically built on the occupational word for a woman managing milk and food production.
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 strong masculine nd-agent noundossier summary
fēond
An Old English enemy, foe, and Devil noun inherited from the Germanic lexicalized present-participial formation *fi(j)and-. OED’s revised 2026 entry treats fēond and fīond as dialectal Old English forms, documents i-mutated fīend and fȳnd inside the inherited nd-stem inflection, and traces the word through a highly variable Middle English record into modern fiend. Bosworth–Toller supplies the Old English paradigm and examples; the Middle English Dictionary independently reports 188 quotations across eight senses. Cotton MS Vitellius A XV folio 180v was directly inspected at Beowulf 2289, where feondes modifies fotlast, the foe’s footprint.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗Old Saxon class-II weak verbdossier summary
hatōn
The normalized Old Saxon weak-verb lemma hatōn is supported by a four-locus dictionary inventory: Heliand 1451 writes infinitive hatan in manuscript M and haton in manuscript C; Heliand 4915 writes genitive-plural present-participial hatandiero in M and hettendero in C; manuscript C supplies preterite hatoda at Heliand 5423; and GlG supplies infinitive haton aligned with Latin odisse. Those are six witness readings at four cited loci, not six independent lexemes or four manuscripts. The first Munich infinitive and the Munich hatandiero locus were directly inspected. The category problem is deeper than spelling: Köbler also indexes the Heliand 4915 forms under the separate agent noun hėttiand, enemy. The record therefore exposes the exact point where a live participial form and a lexicalized enemy noun overlap. It does not prove that pursue was the root meaning, that every enemy hates, or that every indexed form belongs unambiguously to one synchronic category.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗Old High German weak-verb citation formdossier summary
hazzōn
An Old High German citation form in the inherited Germanic hate-verb family, printed beside hazzēn and spelling variants hazēn, hazōn, haʒʒēn, and haʒʒōn. Starling’s source record dates hazzēn to the eighth century and hazzōn to the ninth; Duden and Grimm’s DWB group the ēn and ōn forms in the history of German hassen. Corpus-wide research independently shows that some Old High German class-III ēn verbs also occur with class-II ōn forms, but the accessible abstract does not establish that hazzōn is one of its twenty repeatedly attested double forms. DWB reports haʒôn aligned with Latin aemulari and the forms hatamas and hatent with insequamur and insequuntur. Those reports support an action range involving following or hostile pursuit; they are not directly inspected manuscript tokens. Pokorny’s account, as transmitted by Starling, explicitly warns that the Germanic evidence does not prove “pursue” was the root’s basic meaning. The route therefore distinguishes the normalized headword, the combined historical variants, the reconstructed Germanic weak verb and noun family, the qualified Indo-European comparison, and the point where knowledge ends.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗Old Saxon masculine i-stem noundossier summary
heti
Old Saxon heti is an attested noun, not a reconstructed Proto-Germanic form. Köbler prints the normalized citation form hėti* with a trailing asterisk, then gives three cited lexical loci whose inflections produce five witness readings: accusative singular heti at Heliand 1322 in manuscripts M, C, and V; dative singular heti at Genesis 60; and genitive singular hetias in the tenth-century Saxon Confession. No nominative singular appears in that inventory, but the exact surface heti is visibly written in Munich Cgm 25. The directly inspected Heliand line places the noun in the Beatitudes, where righteous people endure rîkioro manno heti endi harmquidi, powerful men's hostility or persecution and hostile speech. The Saxon Confession instead places hetias beside malice, envy, and slander among confessed wrongs. Those contexts establish a range broader than one private feeling without proving that persecution was the prehistoric root meaning. Fulk and Köbler analyze the Old Saxon comparison as an i-stem; Pfeifer describes the wider Germanic noun as an old es/os-stem, so the inherited morphological account remains public rather than falsely harmonized.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗021
ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY
HISTORICAL FORMS
0312
WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED
CLAIMS & DISPUTES
SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 7
openprobableposition text
Did -rīx mean exactly “king” in every compound name?
Not necessarily. The king or prince value is secure for the element, but scholarship distinguishes names where it is determinative from analyses in which it is semantically bleached or intensifying. Each host therefore requires its own compositional claim.
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.
openprobableposition text
Are fijan and hatan perfect synonyms?
They overlap, but the surviving corpus does not prove identity. In Luke 1 fijandam supplies enemies and hatandane those hating; in Luke 6 hatandans supplies enemies and fijandam those hating. Sturtevant uses their association in a formal argument without proving interchangeable semantics everywhere.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Are frīend and frȳnd separate friend words?
No. OED explains them as inherited i-mutated inflectional forms, with some analogical re-formation possible elsewhere in the paradigm.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Does Beowulf 2289 show a demon sense?
No. The directly inspected folio preserves feondes fotlast in a scene where the dragon finds the foe’s footprint. The pixels establish the form and local context, not the entire lexeme.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Was English humiliation formed from the English verb humiliate?
The documented chronology points the other way: Middle English humiliacioun is evidenced in Chaucer, whereas Merriam-Webster reports the English verb humiliate only circa 1534. Both English words descend through the Latin humilis family; the noun is not modeled as a modern English derivative of the later-attested verb.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Is lady simply the female form of lord?
No. The histories share hlāf, loaf, but hlǣfdige has a kneading element where hlāford has guardian.
CONTRARIAN TRUTHS / 5
RANK 38GRADE Aranked reveal
Old High German fīant was already a noun—but in fixed phrases its old participial character could still shine through.
AWB calls fîant / fîjant a strong masculine noun, then isolates fixed formulas where its old participial character can still shine through. Fîant uuesan could mean be hostile, hate someone, or wish someone ill; fîant mahhôn meant make hostile; zi fîante tuon could mean regard as an enemy or hate. Beside it, AWB records the live weak verb fîên, to hate, in eighth- and ninth-century Alemannic manuscripts. The word is therefore more revealing than a simple literal gloss: it is a lexicalized noun whose older verbal architecture remained locally visible in syntax.
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 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.
RANK 68GRADE Aranked reveal
The brand and species name began as a broader Indigenous predator word.
Portuguese carried Tupi jawára into English, where a broad large-carnivore label became the name of Panthera onca.
040
BOOKS / DICTIONARIES / ARTICLES / DATABASES
SOURCES
No reviewed record in this collection contains “where.” Absence describes this graph, not all of linguistic scholarship.
051
FIRST USES & HISTORICAL OBJECTS
ATTESTATION WITNESSES
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.