16th century, from a Middle High German * gur(e), * gür(e) . Comparable with Dutch geur ( “ smell, scent ” ) , gier ( “ manure ” ) , Middle Low German gȫre ( “ fermentation, strong odour ” ) , Old English gyr ( “ mud ” ) . Probably related with Old High German gor n ( “ dung ” ) , English gore , from Proto-Germanic * gurą , but hardly directly from it. Dialectally attested as Central Franconian Jür , Jur , Gur f ( “ fermentation, flavour of wine ” ) , Alemannic German Gur m ( “ manure ” ) . The geological sense is from the East Central German mining regions. The further origin of these words is uncertain. Possibly from the root of gären ( “ to ferment ” ) , English yeast , but the semantic connection may also be due to secondary association.
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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
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INDEPENDENT SOURCE LIBRARY
More sources for this spelling
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Mayhew–Skeat (1888)
1888; pinned HTML transcription updated October 28, 2024Gur
This word is outside the curated dossier collection. Here is the dictionary’s etymology, with its language and revision preserved. These claims have not yet passed *SET-U’s graph review.
See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.
Read the complete entry and references ↗ · Contribute a cited dossier
MODERN ENTRY POINTS
WORD DOSSIERS
checkmate
An inescapable chess defeat and, figuratively, complete thwarting; a compound transmitted through French, Arabic, and Persian chess language.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗fiende
The ordinary Swedish noun for an enemy, opponent, hostile state, or figurative threat continues Old Swedish fiande or fiände and an inherited Germanic present-participial formation: literally the hating one. Svenska Akademiens current dictionary calls the word Common Germanic and gives the original force hatande; SAOB and Hellquist independently derive the noun from the fi(j)- hate verb behind Gothic fijan and Old Norse fjá. Modern Swedish hata belongs to a separate Germanic hat- family, so fiende is not transparently built from the verb Swedish speakers now use for hate. Historical Swedish also used Fienden for the Devil, but that branch is not the word’s only or current central meaning. All medieval and early-modern examples here are source-reported lexical records, not directly inspected manuscript objects.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗figure
A shape, representation, symbol, number, person, or act of calculation; borrowed through French from Latin figūra, form or shape.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗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 ↗icon
An image, likeness, representative figure, or display symbol, borrowed through Late Latin from Greek eikōn.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗person
An individual human being, historically from Latin persōna, whose older semantic field includes theatrical mask, character, and role.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗salt
Common salt and the wider family of saline substances and figurative savor; an inherited Germanic word in a deep Indo-European salt family.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗vijand
The ordinary Dutch noun for an enemy or opponent descends through Middle Dutch viant or vient and Old Dutch fīunt or fīant from a Germanic present-participial formation: literally the hating one. ONW counts twenty-six Old Dutch records and says the corresponding hate verb is no longer known in Dutch; VMNW counts 407 thirteenth-century records across enemy, Devil, and monster senses. Several Dutch etymologists propose that the medieval use for the Devil helped preserve the word’s full ending, unlike vriend, but they mark that explanation as possible or probable rather than demonstrated. The earliest Old Dutch Devil reading is itself textually disputed, and the Wachtendonck Psalms witnesses are later copies, not directly inspected tenth-century objects.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗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 ↗ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY
HISTORICAL FORMS
fiende
enemy or opponent; a hostile person, state, force, or figurative threat
- DATE
- modern Swedish record
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
figure
shape; representation; symbol; number; person
- DATE
- 13th century–today
- MATCH
- transliteration
- DOSSIERS
- 1
figure
shape; form; likeness; symbol; written character
- DATE
- Middle English
- MATCH
- transliteration
- DOSSIERS
- 1
figure
shape; form; likeness
- DATE
- Anglo-French
- MATCH
- transliteration
- DOSSIERS
- 1
figure
shape; form; likeness
- DATE
- Old French
- MATCH
- transliteration
- DOSSIERS
- 0
figūra
shape; form; likeness; figure of speech
- DATE
- Latin antiquity
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
fjende
enemy or opponent; hostile person, state, force, ideology, animal, or figurative threat
- DATE
- modern Danish and documented early-modern continuation
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
phersu
masked figure or ritual character
- DATE
- Etruscan, 6th century BCE
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
salt
sodium chloride; saline substance; later figurative savor and scientific chemical class
- DATE
- Old English continuation–today
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
vijand
enemy or opponent; a hostile person, group, force, or figurative threat
- DATE
- New Dutch and current Dutch
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
yogurt
a fermented semisolid milk food
- DATE
- 1625–today
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED
CLAIMS & DISPUTES
SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 12
When did exhume acquire the archival recovery metaphor?
The modern dictionary records the figurative sense, but the reviewed evidence does not date one secure semantic pivot.
Can Feind refer only to a personal human enemy?
No. Duden also records hostile powers, enemy soldiers or troops, threats to a group, figurative natural enemies, and opponents of practices or causes.
Is figurative checkmate a late metaphor?
Not entirely. Merriam-Webster reports Middle English chekmaten with both chess and frustrate senses.
Does fiction descend from figure?
No. Latin fictiō and figūra are sibling formations in the fingere and *dheigh- family; neither English word is the parent of the other.
Does modern fiende mean only a person who privately hates someone?
No. SO and SAOB cover personal opponents, hostile states or forces, military collectives, natural enemies, and figurative nonhuman threats.
Is the Devil the central current meaning of fiende?
No. SO defines an opponent prepared to harm a counterpart and supplies ordinary, military, figurative, and natural-enemy uses. SAOB marks the older Devil use as barely current by 1924.
Does the root reveal that every enemy is truly a hater?
No. Etymology records historical formation, not an immutable present-day essence. Modern fiende covers people, states, armies, forces, and figurative threats whether or not literal hatred is evidenced.
Did figure begin as a word only for numbers?
No. Its Latin and medieval fields include shape, form, likeness, symbol, and representation; numerical use is one branch of a wider history.
Does figure descend from dough because both mean something shaped?
No. Latin figūra and Germanic dough forms are separate root formations under *dheigh-.
Did legible begin as a word for general understandability?
The secure formation is literal reading: Late Latin legibilis from legere “to read.” Discernible and understandable are later or extended senses, not the morphological source.
Does modern vijand refer only to one personally hated individual?
No. Current and historical Dutch evidence covers persons, groups, political or military opponents, figurative threats, diseases, animals, and plant threats.
Does a Turkish word prove Turkish invention of yogurt?
No. English borrowed Turkish yoğurt, and a Turkish verbal derivation is supported; neither fact alone establishes the prehistoric inventor or birthplace of fermented milk.
CONTRARIAN TRUTHS / 2
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.
A figure and dough share a shaping root.
Latin figūra and the Germanic dough noun follow different formations back to *dheigh-, to form or build.
BOOKS / DICTIONARIES / ARTICLES / DATABASES
SOURCES
Figure — Definition, Word History, and First Known Use
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗Yogurt — Word History
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗Yoğurt Sözcüğünün Etimolojisi Üzerine Bir Deneme
Emin Erdem Özbek / 2022
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗Figure — American Heritage Dictionary
American Heritage Dictionary Editors / 2022
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗Yoğurt — Türkçe Sözlük
Türk Dil Kurumu / 2023
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗Yoğurmak — Türkçe Sözlük
Türk Dil Kurumu / 2023
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗FIRST USES & HISTORICAL OBJECTS
ATTESTATION WITNESSES
English lexicographic first-use record for yogurt
yogurt / yogurt / 1625
Yogurt — Word Historyreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗Seventeenth-century figurative tree-enemy use
fiende / fiende / 1651
Svenska Akademiens ordbok — FIENDEreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗Source-reported English record for the algorithm spelling
algorithm / algorithm / 1699
Earliest Known Uses of Some of the Words of Mathematics: Awitness excerpt / OPEN RECORD ↗television figurative-threat use
fjende / fjende / modern example dated 1992 by source
Den Danske Ordbog — fjendereporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗Merriam-Webster first-known-use report for figure
figure / figure / 13th century
Figure — Definition, Word History, and First Known Usereporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SEARCH IS DISCOVERY, NOT PROOF
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