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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 2 headwords matching “Young”. These are separate from the reviewed results below.
YoungEnglish (en) · Unnumbered etymologySource text
* As an English, Scottish, and northern Irish surname, from the adjective young, used to distinguish a younger brother or son. This sense is comparable to the surnames le Yunge, German Jong and Junk, Dutch Jong and de Jongh, French Lejeune and LaJeunesse, assimilated from Dion and Guyon. * As a Chinese surname, from the following: ** Cantonese 楊 /杨 (joeng⁴). Doublet of Yeung. ** Hokkien 楊 /杨 (iông / iâng). Doublet of Yu, Yeo, Yeoh. ** Mandarin 楊 /杨 (yáng). Doublet of Yang.
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗youngEnglish (en) · Unnumbered etymologySource text
Inherited from Middle English yong, yonge, from Old English ġeong, from Proto-West Germanic *jung, from Proto-Germanic *jungaz, from Proto-Indo-European *h₂yuHn̥ḱós, from *h₂yuh₁en- (“young”). Cognates Cognate with Alemannic German jung, jungu, junhs, jungà, jòng (“young”), Bavarian junk (“young”), Central Franconian, Luxembourgish jonk (“young”), Cimbrian djung, jung, junk (“young”), Dutch jong (“young”), German, German Low German, Mòcheno and Vilamovian jung (“young”), Limburgish jong, jonk (“young”), Yiddish יונג (yung, “young”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk and Swedish ung (“young”), Faroese, Icelandic ungur (“young”), Gothic 𐌾𐌿𐌲𐌲𐍃 (juggs, “young”).
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 →013
MODERN ENTRY POINTS
WORD DOSSIERS
noundossier summary
boy
A male child or young man; Middle English also used the word for a male servant or churl, and its origin remains disputed.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗noun and adjectivehistorical form
female
A sex-class term borrowed through French from Latin fēmella, a diminutive of fēmina, with its English spelling later remodeled under male.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗noundossier summary
girl
A female child or young woman; in Middle English the word could denote a child or young person of either sex.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗025
ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY
HISTORICAL FORMS
●
Middle English / Indo-European
boi
male servant; churl; young male
- DATE
- Middle English
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Present-Day English / Indo-European
boy
male child; young man
- DATE
- 14th century–today
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Latin / Indo-European
fēmella
young female; female
- DATE
- Latin
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Present-Day English / Indo-European
girl
female child; young woman
- DATE
- 14th century–today
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Middle English / Indo-European
girle
child or young person of either sex; girl
- DATE
- Middle English
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
035
WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED
CLAIMS & DISPUTES
SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 3
resolvedestablishedposition text
Did boy begin as the ordinary word for a male child?
Not exclusively. American Heritage records Middle English boi as male servant, churl, and young male.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Is bride the same historical word as bird?
No. Bosworth-Toller records brȳd, bride or spouse, separately from brid, the young of a bird; the reviewed bride path follows brȳd.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Did Middle English girl mean only a female child?
No. Girle could denote a child or young person of either sex and could even be specified as a boy.
CONTRARIAN TRUTHS / 2
RANK 24GRADE Aranked reveal
Hatred is medieval—and its -red means neither red nor “more.”
Middle English assembled hate with a dying native element for a state or condition. The compound is younger than its parts; below the secure Germanic hate family, even the celebrated PIE root remains a qualified and semantically difficult proposal.
RANK 122GRADE Aranked reveal
Girl could once refer to a boy.
Middle English girle could denote a child of either sex; later English narrowed it toward a female child or young woman.
040
BOOKS / DICTIONARIES / ARTICLES / DATABASES
SOURCES
No reviewed record in this collection contains “young.” Absence describes this graph, not all of linguistic scholarship.
050
FIRST USES & HISTORICAL OBJECTS
ATTESTATION WITNESSES
No reviewed record in this collection contains “young.” Absence describes this graph, not all of linguistic scholarship.
06
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