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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 “Work”. These are separate from the reviewed results below.
workEnglish (en) · Etymology 1Source text
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *werǵ- Proto-Indo-European *-om Proto-Indo-European *wérǵom Proto-Germanic *werką Proto-West Germanic *werk Old English weorc Middle English werk English work From Middle English work, werk, from Old English weorc, from Proto-West Germanic *werk, from Proto-Germanic *werką (“work”), from Proto-Indo-European *wérǵom (“work”), from Proto-Indo-European *werǵ- (“to make”). Cognates Cognate with Scots wark (“work”), North Frisian werk (“work”), Saterland Frisian Wierk (“work”), West Frisian wurk (“work”), Dutch werk (“work”), German Werk (“work”), German Low German Wark (“work”), Luxembourgish Wierk (“work”), Danish værk (“work”), Faroese, Icelandic, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish verk (“work”); also Breton ober (“to do, make”), Cornish gul, gwul (“to do, make”), Irish and Scottish Gaelic fearg (“anger”), Manx ferg (“anger”), Pictish ᚒᚏᚏᚐᚉᚈ (urract, “he made”), Welsh gwneud, neud (“to do, make”), Greek έργο (érgo, “work”), Albanian argëtim (“entertainment; fun, pleasure”), argëtoj (“to amuse, entertain”), Lithuanian váržas (“fish snaring net”), Macedonian врша (vrša, “fish-trap”), Polish wiersza (“fish-trap”), Russian and Ukrainian ве́рша (vérša, “fish-trap”), Serbo-Croatian вр̑ша, vȓša (“fish-trap”), Slovak and Slovene vrša (“fish-trap”), Aghwan 𐔱𐕒𐕙𐔵 (borz, “labour, work”), Armenian գործ (gorc, “work”), Northern Kurdish werz (“bed, field, patch; season”), Avestan 𐬬𐬆𐬭𐬆𐬰 (vər^əz, “to do, work”), Persian ورز (varz, “art, craft, trade”), ورزه (varze, “art, profession, trade”), ورزیدن (varzidan, “to exercise; to train; to work”), Tocharian B warkṣäl (“energy, power, strength”). English cognates include bulwark, boulevard, energy, erg, georgic, liturgy, metallurgy, organ, surgeon, wright. Doublet of erg and ergon.
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗workEnglish (en) · Etymology 2Source text
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *werǵ- Proto-Indo-European *-yéti Proto-Indo-European *wr̥ǵyéti Proto-Germanic *wurkijaną Proto-West Germanic *wurkijan Proto-Indo-European *werǵ- Proto-Indo-European *-om Proto-Indo-European *wérǵom Proto-Germanic *werką Proto-Indo-European *-yéti Proto-Germanic *-janą Proto-Germanic *wirkijaną Proto-West Germanic *wirkijan Old English wyrċan Middle English worchen English work From Middle English werken and worchen, from Old English wyrċan and wircan (Mercian), from Proto-Germanic *wurkijaną (“to work”), from Proto-Indo-European *wr̥ǵyéti (“to be working, to be at work”), from the root *werǵ-. Cognate with Old Frisian werka, wirka, Old Saxon wirkian, Low German warken, Dutch werken, Old High German wurken (German wirken, werken and werkeln), Old Norse yrkja and orka, (Swedish yrka and orka), Gothic 𐍅𐌰𐌿𐍂𐌺𐌾𐌰𐌽 (waurkjan).
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
noun · verbhistorical form
dialogue
Conversation, represented speech, or an exchange of ideas; inherited through medieval French and Latin from a Greek speaking-family.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗Danish common-gender noundossier summary
fjende
Modern Danish fjende is the ordinary noun for a person, state, force, ideological opponent, or figurative thing that harms something else. Den Danske Ordbog derives it from Old Norse fjándi, compares German Feind, and identifies the older formation as a present participle of a verb corresponding to Old Norse fjá, to hate or persecute. Gammeldansk Ordbog records fiende broadly from 1100–1300. Ordbog over det danske Sprog preserves fiende, finde, and related spellings, an ordinary enemy sense, military and animal uses, abstract threats, and a special religious Devil branch. Holbergordbog shows that Fiende could still scan as either three syllables or two, alongside Fiænde, Finde, Fînde, and clipped Fiend. The word is therefore a grammatical fossil, not a current psychological definition: a lexicalized one-who-hates became the ordinary Danish enemy noun and accumulated broad contextual work. The current pronunciations are dictionary records, not retrojections into medieval Danish. No manuscript or print object is claimed as directly inspected.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗Old Norse masculine nouncontrarian claim
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 ↗nouncontrarian claim
robot
A programmable or autonomous machine, named in English through Karel Čapek's R.U.R. from Czech robota, compulsory labor.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗noundossier summary
tea
The English name of the beverage, carried through the Dutch maritime network from a Southern Min form of the Chinese word 茶.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nounhistorical form
yogurt
English yogurt, recorded by 1625, is a borrowing of Turkish yoğurt. Scholarship relates the noun to the Turkish verb yoğurmak, but the age of the food itself is a separate historical question.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nouncontrarian claim
étymon
A French linguistic term for an attested or reconstructed form used to explain the historical development of one or more words.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗Ancient Greek neuter noundossier summary
κῆδος
Ancient Greek κῆδος is an attested neuter noun whose lexical record spans care or concern, anxiety and grief, troubles, mourning and funeral rites, an object of care, and connection by marriage. LSJ documents the Doric variant κᾶδος, Homeric plural forms such as κήδεα or elided κήδεʼ, an Aeschylean play between Helen as an object of care and marriage connection, and a warning that some marriage-based readings of Homeric passages are wrong. Comparative sources place the noun beneath a proposed *ḱh₂d-es- formation and *ḱeh₂d- base alongside Celtic and Germanic material, but the semantic unity of care, grief, battle, hostility, pursuit, and hate remains disputed. The dossier preserves the Greek semantic network, the proposed ancestry, and the explicit boundary as separate claim layers.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗026
ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY
HISTORICAL FORMS
*
Proto-Slavic / Indo-European
*orbota
work; hard or obligatory labor
- DATE
- Proto-Slavic prehistory
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Middle English / Indo-European
dialoge
a literary work representing conversation
- DATE
- Middle English, circa 1200 onward
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Anglo-French / Indo-European
dialogue
conversation or a work in conversational form
- DATE
- Anglo-French period
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Latin / Indo-European
dialogus
dialogue or conversational work
- DATE
- Latin antiquity and Late Latin
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Present-Day English / Indo-European
robot
an artificial worker; later an automatic or programmable machine
- DATE
- 1922–today
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Turkish / Turkic
yoğur-
to knead or work by mixing; the stem compared in scholarship with yoğurt
- DATE
- Turkish verbal stem
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
0317
WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED
CLAIMS & DISPUTES
SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 12
openprobableposition text
Does the Luke lexical swap resolve the remaining 21 noun-participle candidates?
No. Luke 1:71 and 6:27 show that fijan and hatan can exchange the work of enemies and those hating, but those two contextual alignments do not determine every other fijand- token.
openestablishedposition text
Does the ODS Sanskrit comparison prove a direct Sanskrit-to-Danish line?
No. ODS preserves an older comparison with Sanskrit pīyati, while modern comparative work gives a reconstructed route. Neither source licenses a historical borrowing or direct line.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Did dairy originally name milk as a substance?
No. The earliest reviewed route names a milk-production place built on the woman responsible for the work.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Does fijan map one-to-one to Greek miseō, hate?
No. Verbal contexts commonly translate Greek miseō, but the shared fijand- formation also corresponds to Greek echthros, enemy. Luke 1:71 and Luke 6:27 even reverse the constructional work done by fijan and hatan.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Does the 1343 Behaim work establish the first use of hassen?
No. It supplies two located historical contexts, not a complete comparison of all earlier witnesses or a token-level earliest-use proof.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Does Gothic hatis simply mean the modern emotion hate?
No. Hatred remains a legitimate dictionary gloss, but the surviving biblical tokens do different translation work: Streitberg maps the noun chiefly to Greek orgē, maps Galatians 5:20 to thumos, and flags Ephesians 4:31 because both Greek wrath nouns are adjacent.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Does the Munich manuscript date prove an 875 first use?
No. The manuscript is cataloged to the second half of the ninth century, while the Heliand work is dated circa 830–840. The numeric 875 is only a representative object date for timeline placement.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Does the Cotton manuscript date equal the Heliand composition date?
No. Biblissima dates the copy to the middle or second half of the tenth century; the Heliand work itself is earlier.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Does the representative year 875 prove a first use of heti?
No. The Heliand work is earlier than the Munich copy, and other witnesses have distinct or unresolved object dates. The numeric year only positions a second-half ninth-century manuscript.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Do the manuscript dates prove a first known use?
No. The Heliand work predates both copies, and the surviving witnesses are transmission objects rather than the adjective's origin event.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Does κῆδος have one simple English definition?
No. LSJ separates care or concern, anxiety and grief, troubles, funeral rites and mourning, an object of care, and connection by marriage.
resolvedprobableposition text
Is Russian чай simply a direct Chinese loan?
No secure one-hop event is established. Vasmer’s etymology routes the word through Turkic-speaking networks before reaching Chinese ch’a.
CONTRARIAN TRUTHS / 5
RANK 3GRADE Aranked reveal
Robot named forced labor before machinery.
The machine word begins in Czech robota: compulsory labor, corvée, or drudgery.
RANK 12GRADE Aranked reveal
A Turkish word is not proof of who invented the food.
English yogurt is Turkish yoğurt, probably related to yoğur- “knead”; the origin of fermented milk is a different historical question.
RANK 39GRADE Aranked reveal
Old Norse fjándi was an enemy before it was the Devil.
Cleasby and Vigfússon identify the inherited -nd- shape as participial and gloss the older formation as properly a hater. Their first sense is the ordinary enemy; only after the introduction of Christianity does the historical account assign fjándi the fiend branch. ONP then reveals how far the word traveled: 222 citations across enemy, demon, evil spirit, pagan god, Satan, and derogatory uses for hated or bewitched beings and things. The truth is not that every enemy secretly hates. It is that a lexicalized agent noun became an ordinary social category, then accumulated new religious and expressive work.
RANK 180GRADE A-ranked reveal
Tea and chai are the same word after different journeys.
Both routes ultimately reach Chinese 茶. The te-type form traveled especially through Southern Min and Dutch maritime networks; the cha/chai-type family spread especially overland. WALS shows this is a global tendency with real exceptions, not a perfect rule.
RANK 192GRADE A-contrarian claim
The route is a network, not an arrow.
Russian чай reaches Chinese ch’a through a cluster of Turkic comparisons. Vasmer does not license one clean, uniquely named donor language.
042
BOOKS / DICTIONARIES / ARTICLES / DATABASES
SOURCES
book chapter19 CLAIM LINKS
Toward a constructional framework for research on language change
Elizabeth Closs Traugott / 2014
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗digital corpus2 CLAIM LINKS
English prose works of Richard Rolle: a selection
Carl Horstman, editor · Middle English Compendium Editors / 1896
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗055
FIRST USES & HISTORICAL OBJECTS
ATTESTATION WITNESSES
DIRECTLY INSPECTEDprinted book
The CHIMES entry in John Harris’s Lexicon technicum uses calculate in instructions about clock-chime numbers.
calculate / calculate / 1704
Lexicon technicum: or, an universal English dictionary of arts and scienceswitness excerpt / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus
Source-reported title phrase in al-Khwārizmī's mathematical work
al-jabr / algebra / c. 825
Earliest Known Uses of Some of the Words of Mathematics: Areporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Psalm, hating workers of deceit
fēogan / fēogan / Old English, source-reported
Bosworth–Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary — FEÓGANreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus
English prose works of Richard Rolle, selected edition
hatrede / hatreden / hateredyn / hatred / Middle English text, edition page 65
English prose works of Richard Rolle: a selectionreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus
English prose works of Richard Rolle, selected edition
hatrede / hatreden / hateredyn / hatred / Middle English text, edition page 88
English prose works of Richard Rolle: a selectionreporting 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.