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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 LOCAL5 source sections across 1 headword matching “Lit”. These are separate from the reviewed results below.
litEnglish (en) · Etymology 1Source text
Alteration of earlier light, from Middle English lighte, from Old English līhtte, first and third person singular preterite of līhtan (“to light”), by analogy with bit. More at light; compare fit (“fought”). This form was proscribed during the 18th and 19th centuries, with lighted being preferred, but is now the most common past form of light.
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗litEnglish (en) · Etymology 2Source text
From Middle English lit, lut, from Old English lȳt (“little, few”), from Proto-Germanic *lūtilaz (“little, small”), from Proto-Indo-European *lewd- (“to cower, hunch over”). Cognate with Old Saxon lut (“little”), Middle High German lützen (“to make small or low, decrease”). More at little.
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗litEnglish (en) · Etymology 3Source text
From Middle English lit, from Old Norse litr (“colour, dye, complexion, face, countenance”), from Proto-Germanic *wlitiz, *wlitaz (“sight, face”), from Proto-Indo-European *wel- (“to see”). Cognate with Icelandic litur (“colour”), Old English wlite (“brightness, appearance, form, aspect, look, countenance, beauty, splendor, adornment”), Old English wlītan (“to gaze, look, observe”).
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗litEnglish (en) · Etymology 4Source text
From Middle English litten, liten, from Old Norse lita (“to colour”), from litr (“colour”). See above.
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗litEnglish (en) · Etymology 5Source text
Short for literature.
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
noundossier summary
December
The twelfth month in the modern calendar; its inherited Latin name literally identifies it as the tenth month.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗German masculine noundossier summary
Feind
The modern German noun for a personal, political, military, or ideological enemy or opponent. Duden derives it through Middle High German vīnt or vīant and Old High German fīand, literally the hating one; DWDS dates Old High German fīant and fījant to the eighth century and identifies the Germanic ancestor as a petrified substantivized present participle. Grimm’s dictionary independently compares Gothic fijands, Old English fēond, English fiend, Dutch vijand, and Nordic forms, while warning that its own still-deeper foam hypothesis required confirmation. The reviewed route therefore follows the inherited enemy noun to reconstructed *fi(j)and- and *fi(j)ēn-, then treats *peh₁- as proposed and stops.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗German masculine nouncontrarian claim
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 noundossier summary
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 ↗verbcontrarian claim
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 ↗adjectivecontrarian claim
candid
Open or frank in modern English, inherited through French and Latin from a family of brightness and whiteness.
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 ↗nouncontrarian claim
candor
Frankness or honest expression, historically a word for brightness, radiance, whiteness, and unstained purity.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nounhistorical form
chess
The board game whose English name arrives through French chess vocabulary, with competing scholarly accounts of the deeper Persian and Arabic route.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗noun · verbcontrarian claim
clew
A ball of thread, a nautical corner or line, and the older spelling behind clue.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗noun · verbcontrarian claim
clue
A fact that guides discovery—once literally a ball of thread.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗verb · noun · adjectivedossier summary
collect
To bring together, accumulate, infer, or receive; from Latin colligere, literally built with a together-prefix and legere.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗0212
ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY
HISTORICAL FORMS
*
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-Germanic / Indo-European
*hatiz-
hate, anger, enmity, spite, or hostility
- DATE
- Proto-Germanic
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 18
Proto-Indo-European / Indo-European
*skei-
cut, split; proposed source of a discern > know development
- DATE
- Proto-Indo-European prehistory
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 7
Proto-Germanic / Indo-European
*treuwō
pledge, fidelity
- DATE
- Proto-Germanic horizon
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Middle English / Indo-European
-rede / -reden
a state, condition, quality, status, estimation, rule, or relation to X
- DATE
- Middle English
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 0
German / Indo-European
Hass
intense aversion, rejection, or hostility toward a person, group, or institution
- DATE
- current German standard spelling since 1996
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Middle English / Indo-European
conscience
awareness of conduct, morality, or inward knowledge
- DATE
- Middle English, 13th–15th centuries
- 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
escheks / eschez
the game of chess; literally plural chess terms
- DATE
- Anglo-French period
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Latin / Indo-European
etymon
the literal or original meaning of a word
- DATE
- Latin scholarly use
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 2
Gothic / Indo-European
fijan
to hate or detest; direct an experience of hostility toward a stimulus
- DATE
- Gothic textual tradition
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
0324
WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED
CLAIMS & DISPUTES
SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 12
openprobableposition text
Does checkmate literally mean the king is dead?
That is a longstanding Arabic analysis, but Merriam-Webster and Encyclopaedia Iranica favor a Persian loan meaning left, helpless, broken, or paralyzed.
openproposedposition text
Does knowing securely descend from cutting or splitting?
No. The *skei- comparison is published, but the exact formation of Latin scīre and the semantic bridge from separating to knowing remain disputed.
openboundaryposition text
Can icon be securely reconstructed beyond Greek eikōn?
Not from the reviewed evidence. Merriam-Webster calls the proposed deeper base uncertain and a Lithuanian comparison doubtful; Etymonline likewise stops at uncertain Greek prehistory.
openprobableposition text
Does sem frændr en eigi sem fiandr prove the ordinary friend sense?
ONP files the phrase under friend but flags possible kin sense 3; Cleasby–Vigfússon treats it as a possible alliterative exception. The citation does not force one clean answer.
openprobableposition text
Did friend or kin come first semantically?
The inherited agent formation and daughter-language distributions do not recover one securely dated semantic split. Old Norse evidence preserves overlap rather than a single transition record.
openproposedposition text
Is there also a masculine hatr?
ONP maintains a separate masculine analysis, but it rests on one citation and the editors flag it as possibly an elementary error. The possibility remains visible without being promoted to parity with the 54-citation neuter entry.
openestablishedposition text
Was persecution the securely recovered original meaning?
No. The Heliand context supports persecution or endured hostility at one branch locus, but a daughter-language context cannot by itself establish semantic priority in Proto-Germanic or Proto-Indo-European.
openprobableposition text
Does heti securely descend from *ḱeh₂d-?
Only as a qualified proposal. Formal correspondence is published, but grief, pain, care, battle, hostility, persecution, and hatred do not form one transparent semantic sequence.
openprobableposition text
Is hospes securely reduced from *ghos-pot-?
The guest-master compound is a strong published analysis, but the amount of phonetic reduction has led scholars to question its exact form.
openprobableposition text
What is the earliest secure English humility witness?
Merriam-Webster reports the fourteenth century broadly. The Middle English Dictionary supplies a circa-1390 Chaucer citation with humylitee, but this review did not inspect its underlying manuscript witness, and the located citation does not prove that no earlier English occurrence survives.
openestablishedposition text
Does the threat-whet route unveil the word's one true nature as sharpened hostility?
No. That is an evocative modern paraphrase, not an attested ancient definition. The route itself is disputed, and the visible contexts establish hostile disposition or intent without recovering prehistoric consciousness.
openboundaryposition text
Can Greek eikōn be securely reconstructed further?
Not from the reviewed evidence. Merriam-Webster calls the proposed base uncertain and the Lithuanian comparison doubtful; Etymonline likewise marks the Greek prehistory uncertain.
CONTRARIAN TRUTHS / 12
RANK 1GRADE Aranked reveal
A stranger became both guest and enemy.
The reciprocal outsider behind guest and host also became Latin hostis, “enemy.”
RANK 2GRADE Acontrarian claim
Truth began with firmness and fidelity.
Before truth centered factual correspondence, its family named what was firm, faithful, and steadfast.
RANK 4GRADE Acontrarian claim
Humility is an earth-and-lowness metaphor.
Latin humus “ground” produced humilis “low,” then humilitās “lowness,” before the moral virtue.
RANK 16GRADE Aranked reveal
Humiliation is evidenced in English before humiliate.
Chaucer’s Middle English humiliacioun occurs in a humility passage; Merriam-Webster reports the English verb humiliate only circa 1534. Christian Latin and French preserve lowering, abasement, mortification, and self-humbling before current definitions center degradation, disgrace, and shame.
RANK 28GRADE Aranked reveal
German hostile agitation still carries a hound’s chase.
The medieval verb drives dogs after quarry. The same directed-force construction is soon applied to people: Middle High German records set people against one another, and Early New High German polemic sets rulers against Christians. Modern political hetzen is therefore not merely “hate” verbalized; it inherits a grammar of making another actor pursue, pressure, or attack.
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.
RANK 38GRADE Aranked reveal
Old High German fīant was already a noun—but in fixed phrases its old participial character could still shine through.
AWB calls fîant / fîjant a strong masculine noun, then isolates fixed formulas where its old participial character can still shine through. Fîant uuesan could mean be hostile, hate someone, or wish someone ill; fîant mahhôn meant make hostile; zi fîante tuon could mean regard as an enemy or hate. Beside it, AWB records the live weak verb fîên, to hate, in eighth- and ninth-century Alemannic manuscripts. The word is therefore more revealing than a simple literal gloss: it is a lexicalized noun whose older verbal architecture remained locally visible in syntax.
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 40GRADE Aranked reveal
Modern Danish kept the enemy but lost the hate verb inside its grammar.
DDO identifies fjende as historically a present participle of a verb corresponding to Old Norse fjá, to hate or persecute. Old Danish fiende then survives through a remarkable surface cloud: Fiende, Fiænde, Finde, Fînde, clipped Fiend, and both two- and three-syllable scans. The current noun no longer means that every enemy literally feels hate; it names active opposition and extends to states, ideologies, animals, weather, and abstractions. The grammatical fossil unveils a history, not a timeless essence.
RANK 41GRADE Aranked reveal
The enemy fossil and the living hate verb coexisted in Old High German.
AWB records fîên as a weak verb only in eighth- and ninth-century Alemannic manuscripts, but the pocket preserves an infinitive, present participle, preterite, and past participle across hate, hostility, detestation, and rejection. Beside it, fîant was already a strong masculine enemy noun whose old participial character could still shine through in fixed phrases. Old High German therefore preserves both sides of the history at once: the live verbal family and the noun already lexicalized from it. The evidence reveals a grammatical relationship, not the psychology of every enemy and not a securely recovered Proto-Indo-European essence.
0412
BOOKS / DICTIONARIES / ARTICLES / DATABASES
SOURCES
historical text edition5 CLAIM LINKS
Literal Poetic Edda text — Lokasenna
Voluspa.org editor
title prefixAUDIT EVERY USE ↗contemporary dictionary27 CLAIM LINKS
Den Danske Ordbog — fjende
Den Danske Ordbogs redaktion
publisherAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary15 CLAIM LINKS
Holbergordbog — Fiende
Aage Hansen · Sv. Eegholm-Pedersen · Christopher Maaløe
publisherAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary13 CLAIM LINKS
Ordbog over det danske Sprog — Fjende
ODS editorial team / 1922
publisherAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary9 CLAIM LINKS
Hospitality — Definition, Word History, and First Known Use
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary7 CLAIM LINKS
Gammeldansk Ordbog — fiende
Gammeldansk Ordbogs redaktion
publisherAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary6 CLAIM LINKS
Humility — Definition, Use, and First Known Use
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary6 CLAIM LINKS
Mittelhochdeutsches Wörterbuch — hetzen
Thomas Plate · Mittelhochdeutsches Wörterbuch team
publisherAUDIT EVERY USE ↗scholarly lexicon4 CLAIM LINKS
Humilitas — Lewis and Short Latin Dictionary
Charlton T. Lewis · Charles Short · Scaife ATLAS Editors / 1879
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary4 CLAIM LINKS
Humility — American Heritage Dictionary
American Heritage Dictionary Editors / 2022
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary4 CLAIM LINKS
Humilité — étymologie et histoire
CNRTL · ATILF Editors / 2026
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗scholarly reference2 CLAIM LINKS
Sprachwandel — Ältere deutsche Literatur und Sprache
Freie Universität Berlin Editors / 2026
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗0512
FIRST USES & HISTORICAL OBJECTS
ATTESTATION WITNESSES
SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Ancient Greek literary record
λέγω / logic / Archaic Greek
Logeion: λέγωreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Ancient Greek literary and documentary record
λόγος / logic / Archaic / Classical Greek
Logeion: λόγοςreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Latin legal and literary record
lēx / legal / Roman antiquity
Logeion: lexreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Latin literary record
legere / lecture / Latin antiquity
Logeion: legō / legerereporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Latin political and lexical record
candidātus / candidate / Roman antiquity
Corpus of Latin Dictionaries: candidatusreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Latin literary and epigraphic record
salārium / salary / Roman imperial period
Logeion: salariumreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexicographic first use
English lexicographic first-use record for host in the hospitality sense
host / host / 14th century
Host — Word Historyreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Middle English Dictionary citation to Chaucer’s Parson’s Tale
humilite / humility / circa 1390 reported quotation
Humblen — Middle English Dictionary entry and citationswitness excerpt / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexicographic first use
English literary record
clue / clue / late 16th to 17th century
Oxford English Dictionary: clue, n.reporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
G. Callaway, Fellowship of Veld, source-reported by DSAE
ubuntu / ubuntu / 1926
Ubuntu, nounwitness excerpt / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexicographic first use
Merriam-Webster lexicographic first-use record for hospitality
hospitality / hospitality / 14th century
Hospitality — Definition, Word History, and First Known Usereporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexicographic first use
Merriam-Webster source-reported English record
dialogue / dialogue / 13th century
Dialogue — Definition, Word History, and First Known Usewitness 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.