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WIKTIONARY VIA KAIKKI / WIKTEXTRACT

Imported dictionary evidence

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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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2 source sections across 2 headwords matching “Seek”. These are separate from the reviewed results below.

Open the permanent entry for Seek →Open the permanent entry for seek →
SeekEnglish (en) · Etymology 2Source text

* As a North/Low German surname, from Seek, variant of Seeck, shortened from compound names containing the element Sieg (“victory”) (as in Siegfried) or siech (“ill”). * As a Chinese surname, Romanized from 薛 (xuē), see Xue.

Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗
seekEnglish (en) · Unnumbered etymologySource text

From Middle English seke, seken, from Old English sēċan, sēċean, sœ̄ċan, from Proto-West Germanic *sōkijan, from Proto-Germanic *sōkijaną (“to seek”), from Proto-Indo-European *séh₂gyeti (“to seek out”), from *seh₂g- (“to follow, trace”). Cognates Cognate with Yola zeek (“to seek”), North Frisian schük, sjuk, säke (“to search, seek”), Saterland Frisian säike (“to search, seek”), West Frisian sykje (“to seek”), Alemannic German sueche, süeche (“to search, seek”), Bavarian suacha, suachn (“to search”), Central Franconian söke (“to search”), Cimbrian züuchan (“to seek”), Dutch zoeken (“to seek”), Low German söken (“to seek”), German suchen (“to seek”), Luxembourgish sichen (“to seek; to fetch”), Vilamovian zihia, zihja (“to seek”), Yiddish זוכן (zukhn, “to search, seek”), Danish søge (“to seek; to apply”), Faroese søkja (“to seek”), Icelandic sækja (“to seek”), Norwegian Bokmål søke (“to seek; to apply”), Norwegian Nynorsk søka, søke, søkja, søkje (“to seek; to apply”), Swedish söka (“to search”), Gothic 𐍃𐍉𐌺𐌾𐌰𐌽 (sōkjan, “to seek”); also Cornish hedhes (“to reach; to achieve; to manage”), Welsh haeddu (“to deserve, merit”), Latin sāgiō (“to perceive quickly or keenly with the senses”), Ancient Greek ἡγέομαι (hēgéomai, “to go before, precede; to lead; to believe, hold”), Albanian gjegj (“to answer; to obey”), Hittite 𒊭𒀀𒆠𒄑𒍣 (ša-a-ki-ez-zi, “to seek out”). The Middle English and later Modern English hard /k/ derives from Old English sēcð, the third person singular.

Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗

From Wiktionary contributors; extracted by Tatu Ylonen / Wiktextract / Kaikki.org. Extraction source · CC-BY-SA-4.0. Selected source text is reformatted for display; language and section identity are retained.

Source dump: 2026-10-01 · Extraction: 2026-10-30. These dates identify a dump snapshot, not an individual page revision.

Snapshot checksums and coverage
SOURCE SHA-256
5ff2c072f8099f2d2ce484bd6957bf179f046d2ad37bc36555edf8bb84cb5291
CORPUS SHA-256
c4c2a77325141846709230e11c2959332acd630d53e52905b72d36211251b081
IMPORT RUN
73216b9a9b78ed3830994bf853103716f5a4dc57099e371e9f8fdc468facca26
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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
Browse the independently attributed sources →
5REVIEWED RESULTS
2WORD DOSSIERS
1HISTORICAL NODES
0SOURCES
2CLAIMS
0WITNESSES
01

MODERN ENTRY POINTS

WORD DOSSIERS

2
noundossier summary

candidate

A person seeking selection or office; ultimately the Roman office-seeker dressed in a bright white toga.

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Old Norse weak verbdossier summary

hata

Old Norse hata is not only a medieval label for an inward feeling. The Dictionary of Old Norse Prose structures 101 prose citations under four active senses before its participial and reflexive branches: persecute; despise, reject, or cast aside; mock or humiliate; and hate, despise, or stand hostile toward. That ordering is a lexicographic analysis, not a chronology of semantic change. Fritzner independently begins with pursue or seek to destroy, continues through damage or destruction, and only then gives hate opposed to love. Zoëga likewise preserves poetic damage or destruction beside ordinary hate, while Cleasby and Vigfússon record active, reflexive, reciprocal, participial, and disputed poetic uses. Lexicon Poeticum displays eleven linked rows, including variants, damage, destruction, persecution, loathing, haters, and the gold-spending formula, but warns that its concordance has not been reviewed and that dates need checking. A c1200 scan of Holm perg 15 4°, folio 89v, was directly inspected against ONP's diplomatic transcription and visibly preserves hata in the line Elſcaþu hréinlife oc hata engi maɴ. All other rows remain source-reported. The generated possible runic inscriptions on modern dictionary transcriptions are excluded, and no exact historical pronunciation is invented.

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02

ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY

HISTORICAL FORMS

1
03

WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED

CLAIMS & DISPUTES

2

SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 0

CONTRARIAN TRUTHS / 2

RANK 85GRADE Aranked reveal

“Etymological” did not first mean scientific.

The earliest source-reported French use around 1550 describes names that reveal their “true sense.” The modern adjective’s relation-to-a-discipline sense arrived over a much older truth-seeking metaphor.

04

BOOKS / DICTIONARIES / ARTICLES / DATABASES

SOURCES

0

No reviewed record in this collection contains “seek.” Absence describes this graph, not all of linguistic scholarship.

05

FIRST USES & HISTORICAL OBJECTS

ATTESTATION WITNESSES

0

No reviewed record in this collection contains “seek.” Absence describes this graph, not all of linguistic scholarship.

06

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