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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 LOCAL1 source section across 1 headword matching “His”. These are separate from the reviewed results below.
hisEnglish (en) · Etymology 1Source text
From Middle English hes, from Old English his (“his; its”), from Proto-Germanic *hes (“of this”), genitive of Proto-Germanic *hiz (“this, this one”), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱe-, *ḱey- (“this”). Cognate with Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic hans (“his”). More at he; see also its.
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, 2024- HisMiddle English · word_his_pron_1
His, pron. f. acc. her, MD (p. 446), S; hies, S; hes, S; ys, MD; is, 82; hyse, MD.
Read the full source record → - HisMiddle English · word_his_pron_2
His, pron. pl. acc. them, S, S2; hise, S2; hes, S; is, S, S2: es, MD; ys, MD.
Read the full source record → - HisMiddle English · word_his_pron_3
His, pron. poss. his, S, S2; hisse, S2; es, S; is, S, S2; hise, pl., S, W, PP; hyse, S, PP.
Read the full source record →
0112
MODERN ENTRY POINTS
WORD DOSSIERS
German masculine noundossier summary
Freund
German Freund continues Middle High German vriunt and Old High German friunt. DWDS/Pfeifer, Duden, and Grimm independently analyze the inherited Germanic formation as a substantivized present participle of the verb represented by Gothic frijōn and Old English frēogan: historically a loving or favorably disposed one. The record is semantically wider than a modern close companion: the historical dictionaries also document neighbor, relative, lover, ally, supporter, patron, address, and euphemistic uses. The graph joins the High German line to the same reviewed *frijōnd- and *frī- nodes as English friend, keeps *prī- proposed, and stops.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗German masculine nouncontrarian claim
Hass
The modern German noun for intense aversion, rejection, or hostility toward a person, group, or institution. Duden traces Middle and Old High German haʒ to suffering, sorrow, and resentment and records the 1996 spelling change from Haß to Hass. DWDS/Pfeifer reports the Old High German noun from the eighth century and places it in the Germanic family of Old Saxon heti, Old English hete, Old Norse hatr, Gothic hatis, and related forms. Grimm’s DWB preserves a more complicated semantic record: hostile pursuit or action, anger expressed in deeds, ordinary hostile disposition, and even measured rivalry during friendly competition. The reviewed route reuses *hatiz- and the qualified *ḱh₂d-es- / *ḱeh₂d- comparison, then stops.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗noundossier summary
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 ↗nounhistorical form
algebra
A mathematical discipline whose English name travels through Medieval Latin from Arabic al-jabr, restoration or completion.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗noundossier summary
bayou
English bayou, recorded by 1763, came from Louisiana French bayouque. An early Choctaw *bayok is a plausible proposed source, but the historical form and its alleged contraction to modern bók are not securely attested.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗verbdossier summary
betroth
To promise in marriage; a Middle English prefixed formation built on the same historical noun that yielded truth and troth.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nounhistorical form
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 ↗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
bridegroom
A man about to be or recently married; remodeled from bridegome after the older man-word gome became opaque.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗Middle Irish noundossier summary
cais
eDIL separates two Irish headwords written cais. The first, also recorded as caise, is explicitly explained both as love and as hate; its cited passages and glossary equations range from searc and grádh "love" to miscais and mioscais "hatred", with context deciding individual readings. One Éigse line is tentatively translated so that the same visible form occurs on both sides: "my love ... is met by hatred(?)". The question mark matters. The second eDIL headword cais means "eye" and is excluded from this semantic lineage. These records establish a remarkable lexicographic opposition, not one timeless essence, a chronology from love to hate, or proof that every occurrence belongs to one historically indivisible sense. John T. Koch compares the noun with Proto-Celtic *katsi- < *kad-t/si- and a wider *kad- family, but that ancestry and its proposed Germanic comparison remain open. eDIL itself generally supplies etymologies only selectively. No manuscript pixels were directly inspected, no earliest-use or historical-frequency claim is made, and no exact pronunciation is invented.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nouncontrarian claim
candidate
A person seeking selection or office; ultimately the Roman office-seeker dressed in a bright white toga.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗noundossier summary
candor
Frankness or honest expression, historically a word for brightness, radiance, whiteness, and unstained purity.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗0212
ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY
HISTORICAL FORMS
*
Proto-Turkic / Turkic
*kad- / *kad-ï
fir tree; reconstructed base proposed in the boat-word history
- DATE
- Proto-Turkic analysis
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Present-Day English / Indo-European
conscience
awareness of right and wrong; moral judgment; historically also consciousness or awareness
- DATE
- 13th century–today
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Present-Day English / Indo-European
decimate
kill every tenth member historically; later destroy or reduce drastically
- DATE
- 1660–today
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Present-Day English / Indo-European
etymology
the history and origin of a word
- DATE
- late 14th c.–today
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 3
Old English / Indo-European
frēond
friend, relation, or one favorably disposed; historically an nd-stem agent noun
- DATE
- Old English
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 2
Present-Day English / Indo-European
hospice
a program or facility providing palliative care; historically a lodging or shelter
- DATE
- 1818–today
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Tongan / Austronesian
tabu / tapu
forbidden, prohibited, unlawful; historically also sacred or consecrated
- DATE
- Tongan
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
French / Indo-European
étymologie
study or explanation of the origin and historical development of words
- DATE
- Modern French record–today
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
French / Indo-European
étymon
attested or reconstructed form used to explain a word’s historical development
- DATE
- 1892–today
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Beyond secure reconstruction
UNKNOWN
No Proto-Semitic reconstruction is asserted in this dossier.
- DATE
- before the reviewed Arabic derivation
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Beyond secure reconstruction
UNKNOWN
No deeper ancestor of the *pot- component is asserted in this graph branch.
- DATE
- before the reviewed *pot- component
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 0
Beyond secure reconstruction
UNKNOWN
No securely reviewed ancestor beyond this disputed comparison
- DATE
- before the proposed *skei- analysis
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
0324
WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED
CLAIMS & DISPUTES
SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 12
openprobableposition text
Is the exact phonetic shape of *fi(j)and- directly known?
No. The form is a comparative reconstruction. Optional j notation, branch vowels, and the relation of written historical variants require analysis rather than direct Proto-Germanic observation.
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
Was the relative sense inherited or independently strengthened in Germanic branches?
The sources establish the sense across German and Nordic evidence but do not recover one complete prehistoric semantic tree.
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.
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
What securely precedes Old English brȳd?
The sources publish broad Germanic comparanda, including Old High German brūt, but this dossier does not yet have a reviewed source that warrants one reconstructed parent.
openproposedposition text
Are the opposite readings one polysemous word, merged historical homonyms, or a lexicographic convenience?
eDIL groups them in one headword but does not, by that editorial act alone, settle the full historical relationship among every love and hate occurrence.
openprobableposition text
How was historical cais pronounced in each cited period and region?
Not directly recoverable from the reviewed evidence. Written forms and variants do not constitute recorded audio or a complete phonological reconstruction.
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.
openboundaryposition text
Is *lˤra the final word on the ancestry of tea?
It is the final reviewed reconstruction in this dossier, not a declaration that no deeper hypothesis exists. No unique deeper form is promoted until a competing analysis is encoded with direct evidence.
openprobableposition text
Was Portuguese chá borrowed specifically from Cantonese or from Mandarin?
WALS gives a Cantonese cha route through Macao; Infopédia labels the source Mandarin chá. The shared cha-type Chinese family is secure, but the immediate variety label is not unanimous.
openproposedposition text
Are the prayer and gathering senses identical histories?
They converge on Latin collēctus / colligere, but the prayer noun may refer specifically to a congregation’s gathering place; the immediate motivation is qualified as “perhaps.”
CONTRARIAN TRUTHS / 12
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 7GRADE Aranked reveal
Nice crossed from ignorance to approval.
Latin nescius “ignorant” became foolish or wanton, then fastidious and precise, and finally pleasant or kind.
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 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 17GRADE Aranked reveal
-logy never simply meant “the study of.”
The bound form’s recorded range includes expression and discourse as well as doctrine, theory, science, and study. Its trail reaches Greek logos—word, speech, account, reckoning, reason—rather than a prehistoric word meaning “science.”
RANK 18GRADE Aranked reveal
The famous Gaulish ending is -rīx, not decorative -ix.
Cambridge identifies Gaulish -rix /-rīxs/ “king” inside Dumnorix and Vercingetorix and derives it from Proto-Celtic *rīx-s. The r belongs to the historical element; the exact force of that element still varies across individual names.
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 29GRADE Aranked reveal
One Gothic hate verb survives once—in a command to do good to those who hate you.
Project Wulfila’s only verified hatjan token is hatjandam in Matthew 5:44, directly visible on Codex Argenteus folio 3v. A parallel “love your enemies” command in Luke 6:27 instead uses hatandans from class-III hatan. The translation gloss “hate” therefore hides a genuine grammatical and historical dispute.
RANK 30GRADE Aranked reveal
Gothic hatis—the noun related to English hate—survives chiefly as wrath, including the wrath to come and the wrath of God.
Project Wulfila reports fifteen tokens in hatis, hatiza, and hatize. Fourteen are biblical; Streitberg maps the family chiefly to Greek orgē, gives Galatians 5:20 thumos, and flags Ephesians 4:31 because both stand together. Codex Argenteus folio 129r directly preserves hatiza in “the wrath to come.” Even the paradigm resists simplification: synchronic neuter a-stem, historically an i-stem remodeled into it.
RANK 34GRADE Aranked reveal
The Devil entered English as the Enemy—and the enemy was a fossilized hater.
OED’s revised history identifies fiend as an inherited Germanic noun made from the present participle of the hate verb. Old English fēond meant enemy and foe as well as Devil; OED explains Satan as the ultimate Enemy and marks the literal enemy sense obsolete after the medieval period. Cotton MS Vitellius A XV still visibly preserves feondes in a concrete foe’s-footprint scene at Beowulf 2289.
RANK 35GRADE Aranked reveal
A fiend was an enemy before it was a demon.
OED’s revised history starts with enemy or foe and explains the Devil as the ultimate Enemy. The English noun continues Old English fēond, itself inherited from a Germanic lexicalized one-who-hates formation. Middle English then preserves enemy, Satan, demon, possession, and monster senses together before the literal enemy sense becomes obsolete.
RANK 37GRADE Aranked reveal
Swedish fiende is not built from modern hata.
SO says fiende originally meant hatande. SAOB and Hellquist make the hidden grammar explicit: the enemy noun is a lexicalized present participle of the Germanic fi(j)- verb, literally one who hates. But SAOB’s separate hata article places the modern Swedish hate verb in the hat- family. Swedish therefore carries two different Germanic hate histories side by side: one fossilized inside the everyday noun enemy, the other alive as the everyday verb hata.
0412
BOOKS / DICTIONARIES / ARTICLES / DATABASES
SOURCES
scholarly essay75 CLAIM LINKS
The shortest history of hatred continued and partly concluded
Anatoly Liberman / 2018
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary25 CLAIM LINKS
Check — Word History
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary23 CLAIM LINKS
Science — Word History
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary22 CLAIM LINKS
Guest — Word History
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary21 CLAIM LINKS
Calculus — Word History and Etymology Note
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary20 CLAIM LINKS
Wife — Definition and Word History
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary17 CLAIM LINKS
Checkmate — Word History
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary16 CLAIM LINKS
Dairy — Definition, Word History, and First Known Use
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary16 CLAIM LINKS
Host — Word History
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary15 CLAIM LINKS
Emotion — Origin and history
Douglas Harper / 2026
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary14 CLAIM LINKS
Chai — Definition and Word History
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary14 CLAIM LINKS
Dialogue — Definition, Word History, and First Known Use
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗0512
FIRST USES & HISTORICAL OBJECTS
ATTESTATION WITNESSES
DIRECTLY INSPECTEDprinted book
The first edition of the Académie française dictionary prints HOSTEL as a headword in the historical French family later normalized as hôtel.
hôtel / hotel / 1694
Le dictionnaire de l'Académie française. Tome 1 (A–L), première éditionreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗DIRECTLY INSPECTEDprinted book
John Harris’s Lexicon technicum prints the historical English headword LOGICK and opens by calling it the art of right thinking.
logic / logic / 1704
Lexicon technicum: or, an universal English dictionary of arts and sciencesreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗DIRECTLY INSPECTEDprinted book
A passage in John Harris’s Lexicon technicum cites a Lecture by Nehemiah Grew about varieties of taste read before the Royal Society.
lecture / lecture / 1704
Lexicon technicum: or, an universal English dictionary of arts and scienceswitness excerpt / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus
Source-reported Latin lexical record
calculus / calculate / Latin antiquity
Calculus — Word History and Etymology Notereporting 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 REPORTEDlexicographic first use
Merriam-Webster first-known-use report
bride / bride / before the 12th century
Bride — Definition, Word History, and First Known Usereporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexicographic first use
English lexicographic first-use record for mussel
mussel / mussel / before the 12th century
Mussel — Word Historyreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexicographic first use
English lexicographic first-use record for mouse
mouse / mouse / before the 12th century
Mouse — Word Historyreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexicographic first use
English lexicographic first-use report for December
December / December / before the 12th century
December — Word Historyreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexicographic first use
English lexical record for the prayer noun
collect / collect / before 12th century
Collect — Word Historyreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexicographic first use
Merriam-Webster source-reported Old English record
lagu / law / before the 12th century
Law — Word Historyreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexicographic first use
Merriam-Webster source-reported Old English record
sealt / salt / before the 12th century
Salt — Definition, Word History, and First Known Usereporting 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.