From Middle High German strank , stranc , strange , from Old High German stranc , from Proto-Germanic * strangiz , from Proto-Indo-European * strengʰ- ; related to Middle High German strange f , from Old High German stranga ( “ strand ” ) . Cognate with Low German Strenge , Dutch streng , English string , Danish streng , Latin stringere , Swedish sträng .
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 LOCALNo exact match for “Strang” in this partial English subset. That does not mean the full research corpus—or linguistic scholarship—has no record. Check the original dictionary entry ↗
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, 2024Strang
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.
Read the complete entry and references ↗ · Contribute a cited dossier
019
MODERN ENTRY POINTS
WORD DOSSIERS
nouncontrarian claim
guest
A person receiving hospitality, inherited through Old English from the Germanic branch of reconstructed *ghos-ti-.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nounhistorical form
hospice
A program or facility for palliative care, historically a lodging or shelter for travelers, the poor, or the infirm.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nounhistorical form
hospital
A medical institution whose name first referred to guest accommodation and charitable lodging, through Medieval Latin hospitāle.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nounhistorical form
hospitality
The reception and care of guests, inherited through French from the Latin reciprocal host-and-guest family.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nounhistorical form
host
A person who receives guests, borrowed through Anglo-French from Latin hospes, a word that could name either side of a reciprocal hospitality relationship.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nounhistorical form
hostel
A lodging place, especially an inexpensive dormitory-style accommodation, continuing the older hospitality branch shared with hospital and hotel.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗adjectivecontrarian claim
hostile
Enemy-like or antagonistic, borrowed through French and Latin from hostīlis, built on Latin hostis “stranger; enemy.”
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nouncontrarian claim
hostis
The Latin word for an outsider or public enemy, preserving the historical semantic turn from foreign stranger to armed opponent.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nounhistorical form
hotel
A public lodging establishment, borrowed from French hôtel through Old French hostel and ultimately the Latin hospitality family.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗025
ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY
HISTORICAL FORMS
*
Proto-Germanic / Indo-European
*gastiz
guest or stranger
- DATE
- Proto-Germanic prehistory
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
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
Middle English / Indo-European
gest / gyst / gust / gist
guest, visitor, stranger
- DATE
- Middle English
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Old English / Indo-European
giest / gyst / gest / gæst
guest or stranger
- DATE
- Old English
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Latin / Indo-European
hostis
foreigner or stranger in early use; later enemy
- DATE
- Latin antiquity
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 2
0313
WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED
CLAIMS & DISPUTES
SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 2
resolvedprobableposition text
How did a reciprocal stranger become an enemy?
Early Latin hostis referred to a foreigner or legally recognized outsider before later Roman usage restricted it to a hostile outsider or enemy.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Did Latin hostis always mean enemy?
No. Roman sources remembered an older foreigner or stranger sense before usage restricted the word toward a public or armed enemy.
CONTRARIAN TRUTHS / 11
RANK 1GRADE Acontrarian claim
A stranger became both guest and enemy.
The reciprocal outsider behind guest and host also became Latin hostis, “enemy.”
RANK 74GRADE Acontrarian claim
Lay and law are cousins; the other lays are strangers.
The set-down verb and law meet at *legh-. Lay the poem and lay meaning non-clerical arrived through different French, Latin, and Greek histories.
RANK 89GRADE Aranked reveal
The host could also be the guest.
Latin hospes carried reciprocal host-and-guest roles. The opposition feels fixed in modern English, but the historical hospitality relationship could reverse when obligations were returned.
RANK 90GRADE Acontrarian claim
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 91GRADE Aranked reveal
A hospital was hospitality before medicine.
The English record begins with lodging and charitable shelter. The medical institution developed inside an older guest-care family rather than naming medicine from the start.
RANK 138GRADE Branked reveal
The Devil may have preserved the second syllable of Dutch vijand.
The solid layer is already strange: vijand is a fossilized present participle, literally one who hates. The speculative layer is stranger. EWN, Van Veen, De Vries, and Van Haeringen propose that medieval use for the Devil made vijand a church or consecrated term whose full ending resisted the reduction seen in vriend. VMNW proves the Devil sense was real with repeated thirteenth-century records. It does not prove the phonological cause. The correct reveal is may have preserved, not did preserve.
RANK 150GRADE Aranked reveal
Hotel and hospital are siblings, not parent and child.
French hôtel continues Old French hostel, while hospital follows a related learned route through the same Latin guest-accommodation family. English hotel is not simply a shortening of English hospital.
RANK 160GRADE Aranked reveal
Hospitality contains both host and guest.
Latin hospes could name either participant in reciprocal hospitality; the modern practice descends from a relationship, not just the host's action.
RANK 163GRADE Acontrarian claim
The enemy was once the stranger.
Older Latin hostis named a foreigner or legally recognized outsider. Roman authors themselves explain how usage narrowed toward the armed or public enemy.
RANK 173GRADE Aranked reveal
Hostel is older than the modern hotel story.
Hostel, hotel, and hospital are doublets from Latin guest lodging. Hostel preserves the older-looking French form; it is not a recent clipping of hotel.
RANK 176GRADE Aranked reveal
Hospice began as hospitality, not terminal care.
English hospice first named lodging, especially a religious guesthouse. Palliative care is a later specialization of the same shelter-and-care history.
040
BOOKS / DICTIONARIES / ARTICLES / DATABASES
SOURCES
No reviewed record in this collection contains “strang.” Absence describes this graph, not all of linguistic scholarship.
051
FIRST USES & HISTORICAL OBJECTS
ATTESTATION WITNESSES
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.