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 “Gu”. These are separate from the reviewed results below.
GuEnglish (en) · Etymology 1Source text
From Mandarin 古 (Gǔ).
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗GuEnglish (en) · Etymology 2Source text
From either Mandarin 谷 (Gǔ) or 古 (Gǔ), from Chinese.
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.
Mayhew–Skeat (1888)
1888; pinned HTML transcription updated October 28, 20240112
MODERN ENTRY POINTS
WORD DOSSIERS
nounheadword prefix
guest
A person receiving hospitality, inherited through Old English from the Germanic branch of reconstructed *ghos-ti-.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nounhistorical-form prefix
bridegroom
A man about to be or recently married; remodeled from bridegome after the older man-word gome became opaque.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗onomastic compound elementhistorical form
-rīx
An attested Gaulish second member meaning “king” or “prince,” visible in compound personal names such as Dumnorix and Vercingetorix and inherited from Proto-Celtic *rīx-s.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nounhistorical form
adverb
A grammatical class commonly modifying verbs, adjectives, other adverbs, phrases, clauses, or sentences; the English term continues Latin adverbium.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nouncontrarian claim
aguacate
The Spanish word for the avocado tree and fruit, borrowed from Nahuatl āhuacatl, whose historical records include both fruit and testicle senses.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nouncontrarian claim
alpaca
An English animal and fiber word borrowed through Spanish from Aymara allpaqa / allphaqa.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗noundossier summary
avocado
An English reshaping of Spanish aguacate from Nahuatl āhuacatl, a word documented with both avocado and testicle senses.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗noun · verbcontrarian claim
boomerang
An Aboriginal Australian borrowing recorded in English by 1824. Dharug and Dharawal forms have been proposed, but the Australian National Dictionary Centre says the exact source language remains uncertain.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nouncontrarian claim
bride
A woman about to be or recently married; inherited from Old English brȳd and directly preserved inside bridegroom.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nouncontrarian claim
chai
In current English, a South Asian-style tea commonly prepared with milk and spices; the word belongs to the overland cha/chay transmission family ultimately derived from Chinese 茶.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗verb · noundossier summary
checkmate
An inescapable chess defeat and, figuratively, complete thwarting; a compound transmitted through French, Arabic, and Persian chess language.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nouncontrarian claim
chá
The Portuguese word for tea, a European cha-type form associated with sixteenth-century Portuguese contact through Macao rather than the Dutch te-type route.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗0212
ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY
HISTORICAL FORMS
*
Proto-Germanic / Indo-European
*gumōn-
man; human being
- DATE
- Proto-Germanic
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Present-Day English / Indo-European
guest
a person receiving hospitality; a visitor
- DATE
- 13th century–today
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Old English / Indo-European
guma
man; human being
- DATE
- Old English
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Proto-Germanic / Indo-European
*gastiz
guest or stranger
- DATE
- Proto-Germanic prehistory
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Proto-Indo-European / Indo-European
*ghos-pot-
guest-master; person embodying a reciprocal hospitality relationship
- DATE
- Proto-Indo-European prehistory
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 6
Proto-Indo-European / Indo-European
*ghos-ti-
stranger, guest, host; person with reciprocal duties of hospitality
- DATE
- Proto-Indo-European prehistory
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 9
Proto-Celtic / Indo-European
*rīx-s
king, nominative singular
- DATE
- Proto-Celtic
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 2
Proto-Germanic / Indo-European
*wardaz
guard; guardian
- DATE
- Proto-Germanic
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 0
Proto-Indo-European / Indo-European
*wor-to-
watching; guarding formation
- DATE
- Proto-Indo-European suffixed o-grade formation
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 0
Spanish / Indo-European
aguacate
avocado fruit or tree
- DATE
- Spanish
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 2
Old English / Indo-European
brȳdguma
bridegroom; bride-man
- DATE
- Old English
- MATCH
- transliteration
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Portuguese / Indo-European
chá
tea plant, leaves, infusion, and related current senses
- DATE
- Portuguese record–today
- MATCH
- language
- DOSSIERS
- 1
0324
WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED
CLAIMS & DISPUTES
SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 12
openprobableword prefix
How broadly distributed is *ghos-ti-?
The reconstruction is supported by Germanic, Italic, and Slavic evidence but is limited to a western set of Indo-European branches.
openprobableword prefix
Did Old Norse shape the Middle English forms?
Old Norse gestr may have reinforced the Middle English initial g, but the English word is fundamentally inherited from Old English and Germanic.
resolvedestablishedword prefix
Was guest borrowed from Latin hostis?
No. English guest continues the Germanic branch; Latin hostis is a parallel cognate branch that meets it at *ghos-ti-.
openproposedposition text
Is the deepest root *leǵ- or *sleǵ-?
The traditional *leǵ- reconstruction remains widely represented, while published scholarship argues that the gather or collect root began with *s. The graph preserves both analyses.
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
Can the lexicalization of one who hates as enemy be dated to one exact event?
No unique event is known. Cross-branch evidence places it before the recorded daughter languages, but no text records the prehistoric lexicalization moment.
openprobableposition text
Can the exact lexicalization date of the loving participle be known?
No. The formation predates the daughter-language records and is already nominal in the earliest High German evidence.
openproposedposition text
Was the original meaning hostile pursuit or suffering and sorrow?
Unresolved. DWB argues for hostile pursuit or persecution as the original center; Duden glosses the origin as suffering, sorrow, and resentment; DWDS foregrounds hostile disposition, resentment, and enmity.
openboundaryposition text
Can aguacate be securely pushed deeper than āhuacatl?
Not from the reviewed sources. The institutional dictionaries reach the Nahuatl word and its historical witnesses but do not establish a deeper lexical ancestor.
openproposedposition text
Which Aboriginal language supplied boomerang?
Dharug bumarin and a Dharawal bou-mar-rang form are published candidates, but the Australian National Dictionary Centre says the exact source language remains uncertain.
openproposedposition text
Is calculus securely a diminutive of calx “limestone”?
Not securely. The traditional analysis is morphologically and semantically irregular; an alternative links Latin calculus and Greek stone words through a possible shared substrate source.
openprobableposition text
Did candidates claim moral purity?
The whitened toga is historical and lexical. Reading it as a guaranteed moral-purity claim goes beyond what the word formation alone proves.
CONTRARIAN TRUTHS / 12
RANK 90GRADE Aranked-word prefix
Guest and hostile share a stranger.
Germanic guest and Latin hostis remain separate branches until reconstructed *ghos-ti-. One branch preserved the visitor; the Latin branch developed the outsider and enemy family.
RANK 1GRADE Acontrarian claim
A stranger became both guest and enemy.
The reciprocal outsider behind guest and host also became Latin hostis, “enemy.”
RANK 6GRADE Aranked reveal
Evidence became a thread you could follow.
Old English cliewen was a ball of thread; the labyrinth metaphor turned it into guidance through uncertainty.
RANK 9GRADE Aranked reveal
The most repeated origin story is not the most rigorous answer.
Mapuche ancestry is a serious, evidenced proposal—but current RAE and a historical Spanish argument keep the deeper source genuinely open.
RANK 10GRADE Acontrarian claim
Andean neighbors need not be linguistic cousins.
Alpaca comes from Aymara while llama comes from Quechua: the words travel through Spanish from different families.
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 26GRADE Aranked reveal
Old English hated vices and deeds as well as people.
Bosworth–Toller’s Pastoral Care examples make conduct grammatical: rulers hate their subjects’ vices, and the text distinguishes loving what enemies are from hating what they do. The historical verb therefore records directed moral and hostile judgment, not only an inward emotion label.
RANK 32GRADE Aranked reveal
Enemy is a fossilized hater—but 21 Gothic tokens still refuse to choose.
Project Wulfila lists 42 candidates under fijan and 26 under the enemy noun fijands. Their intersection is exactly 21 surface tokens. Ayora Estevan explains the collision: *fi(j)and- had lexicalized as enemy before Gothic, while Gothic still possessed the productive present participle one who hates. Case and syntax resolve some passages; the remaining 21 stay public as noun-versus-participle ambiguity.
RANK 55GRADE Aranked reveal
frændi is friend’s cognate—but kinship became its Old Norse center.
The Germanic family did not carry one frozen dictionary definition into every daughter language. OED places Old Icelandic frændi beside English friend; Cleasby–Vigfússon and Fritzner preserve the old participial analysis; ONP then exposes what happened in use. Its 225 citations distinguish friend, foster brother or companion, kinsman or son, parents, and ancestor, with no sharp wall between friend and kin. The unveiling is semantic divergence backed by a shared graph: English centers chosen companion, while the Scandinavian cognate centers family without ceasing to be cognate.
RANK 61GRADE Acontrarian claim
Its most famous behavior is not universal—and even its exact donor language is unsettled.
Many hunting and fighting boomerangs do not return. Dharug and Dharawal sources have been proposed, while ANU keeps the exact language unresolved.
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.
RANK 70GRADE Aranked reveal
The viral “it means testicle” story overclaims a real fact.
Nahuatl āhuacatl is documented with both avocado and testicle senses. The dictionaries establish polysemy and transmission through Spanish—not which sense named the other.
0412
BOOKS / DICTIONARIES / ARTICLES / DATABASES
SOURCES
historical dictionary3 CLAIM LINKS
A Malayalam and English Dictionary — māṅṅa
Hermann Gundert / 1872
citation-key prefixAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary22 CLAIM LINKS
Guest — Word History
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
title prefixAUDIT EVERY USE ↗etymological dictionary88 CLAIM LINKS
Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic — *fi(j)ēn- and *fi(j)and-
Guus Kroonen / 2013
author or editorAUDIT EVERY USE ↗typological database26 CLAIM LINKS
Chapter 138: Tea
Östen Dahl / 2013
publisherAUDIT EVERY USE ↗research database24 CLAIM LINKS
Indo-European Lexicon — k̑ād- : k̑ədes- : k̑əd-s- and its reflexes
Linguistics Research Center editors / 2026
author or editorAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary21 CLAIM LINKS
An Icelandic-English Dictionary — fjándi
Richard Cleasby · Guðbrandur Vigfússon / 1874
author or editorAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary20 CLAIM LINKS
An Icelandic-English Dictionary — FRÆNDI
Richard Cleasby · Guðbrandur Vigfússon / 1874
author or editorAUDIT EVERY USE ↗scholarly dictionary20 CLAIM LINKS
Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic
Guus Kroonen / 2013
author or editorAUDIT EVERY USE ↗research database20 CLAIM LINKS
Indo-European Lexicon: *leg-
Linguistics Research Center
author or editorAUDIT EVERY USE ↗book chapter19 CLAIM LINKS
Toward a constructional framework for research on language change
Elizabeth Closs Traugott / 2014
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary18 CLAIM LINKS
A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary — hete and related entries
John R. Clark Hall / 1916
publisherAUDIT EVERY USE ↗scholarly reference17 CLAIM LINKS
Celtic, chapter 9 of The Indo-European Language Family
Anders Richardt Jørgensen / 2022
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗0512
FIRST USES & HISTORICAL OBJECTS
ATTESTATION WITNESSES
SOURCE REPORTEDlexicographic first use
English lexicographic first-use record for guest
guest / guest / 13th century
Guest — Word Historyattested-form prefix / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Guthlac A, fallen spirits
fēond / fēond / Old English, source-reported
Oxford English Dictionary — fiend, n., revised 2026witness-title prefix / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Gustav I’s registratur, friendship-with-enemies clause
fiande / fiände / fiende / 1521
Svenska Akademiens ordbok — FIENDEwitness-title prefix / OPEN RECORD ↗DIRECTLY INSPECTEDprinted book
The PESTE entry in the first edition of the Académie française dictionary uses quarantaine for imposed isolation after travel from a place suspected of plague.
quarantaine / quarantine / 1694
Le dictionnaire de l'Académie française. Tome 2 (M–Z), première éditionreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗DIRECTLY INSPECTEDprinted book
The first edition of the Académie française dictionary prints SINCERE as a headword and opens with the senses true and frank.
sincère / sincere / 1694
Le dictionnaire de l'Académie française. Tome 2 (M–Z), première éditionwitness excerpt / OPEN RECORD ↗DIRECTLY INSPECTEDprinted book
John Harris’s Lexicon technicum prints ETYMOLOGY as a headword and defines it as the part of grammar concerned with words’ origins and true signification.
etymology / etymology / 1704
Lexicon technicum: or, an universal English dictionary of arts and scienceswitness excerpt / OPEN RECORD ↗DIRECTLY INSPECTEDprinted book
The SYSTEM entry in John Harris’s Lexicon technicum uses Science for an organized branch of knowledge when defining a system of philosophy.
science / science / 1704
Lexicon technicum: or, an universal English dictionary of arts and scienceswitness excerpt / OPEN RECORD ↗DIRECTLY INSPECTEDprinted book
John Harris’s NOTES in Musick entry describes a fixed group of six select syllables formerly used to distinguish degrees of sound.
select / select / 1704
Lexicon technicum: or, an universal English dictionary of arts and sciencesreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Metres of Boethius, Nero as a wicked person
fēond / fēond / early Old English, source-reported
Oxford English Dictionary — fiend, n., revised 2026witness excerpt / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Eyvindr skáldaspillir, Hákonarmál 12
fjándi / fjándi / poetic composition dated 961 by source; dating requires checking
Lexicon Poeticum — fjándi, noun masculine, enemy or devilwitness excerpt / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Dīwān Lughāt al-Turk record discussed by Alonso de la Fuente
kayguk / kayık / 11th-century kayguk report
Urban legends: Turkish kayık “boat” and “Eskimo” qayaq “kayak”witness excerpt / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexicographic first use
Merriam-Webster source-reported Old English record
lagu / law / before the 12th century
Law — Word Historywitness 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.