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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 “War”. These are separate from the reviewed results below.
warEnglish (en) · Unnumbered etymologySource text
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *wers-der. Proto-Germanic *werzaną Proto-West Germanic *werʀan Proto-Indo-European *-h₂ Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂ Proto-Germanic *-ō Proto-West Germanic *-u Frankish *werʀubor. Early Medieval Latin werra Old Northern French guerreder. Old English werre Middle English werre English war Inherited from Middle English werre, from Late Old English werre /wyrre (“armed conflict”), from Anglo-Norman and Old Northern French guerre /werre (compare modern French guerre), from Medieval Latin werra, from Frankish *werʀu (“confusion; quarrel”), from Proto-Indo-European *wers- (“to mix up, confuse, beat, thresh”). Gradually displaced native Old English beadu, hild, ġewinn, orleġe, wīġ, and many others as the general term for "war" during the Middle English period. Related to Old High German werra (“confusion, strife, quarrel”) and German verwirren (“to confuse”), but not to Wehr (“defense”). Also related to Old Saxon werran (“to confuse, perplex”), Dutch war (“confusion, disarray”), West Frisian war (“struggle, resistance, defense, effort, exertion, activity”), and Romance terms borrowed from Germanic, such as Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish guerra (“war”). Not likely related to worse or wurst.
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- WarMiddle English · word_war_adj
War, adj. cautious, wary, S, S2, C2, G, W, W2, PP; wear, S; warliche, adv. cautiously, S; wearliche, S; warly, H; warli, W. Der.: warschipe, prudence, S.—AS. (ge)wær: OHG. gi-war (Otfrid). See I-war (p. 123).
Read the full source record → - WarMiddle English · word_war_vb
War, pt. s. subj. were, S2; war . . ne, unless, S2; see Was.
Read the full source record → - WarMiddle English · word_war_adv
War, adv. where, S; see Wher.
Read the full source record →
0112
MODERN ENTRY POINTS
WORD DOSSIERS
German masculine nouncontrarian claim
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 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 ↗nounhistorical form
algorism
The older English word for calculation with Hindu-Arabic numerals, transmitted through French and Medieval Latin from the name al-Khwārizmī.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nounhistorical form
algorithm
A finite or stepwise procedure, descended through medieval arithmetic vocabulary from the Latinized name of al-Khwārizmī.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗verb · nouncontrarian claim
check
To verify, restrain, mark, or issue a bank draft today; a word whose oldest English history begins with a threatened king in chess.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗verb · noundossier summary
checkmate
An inescapable chess defeat and, figuratively, complete thwarting; a compound transmitted through French, Arabic, and Persian chess language.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nouncontrarian claim
conscience
The moral sense or awareness of one's conduct, inherited through medieval French from the Latin knowing-family.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗adjective · noundossier summary
conscious
Aware, awake, or deliberate; borrowed directly from Latin conscius in the knowing-family.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nouncontrarian claim
emotion
Feeling or affect; borrowed through French from a Latin movement family and first used in English for disturbance, agitation, or social movement.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗English nounhistorical form
fiend
An inherited English noun whose earliest recorded sense was enemy or foe, not demon. Old English fēond belonged to a Germanic lexicalized one-who-hates formation; Middle English fẹ̄nd preserved enemy, Satan, demon, possession, and monster senses across extensive spelling variation; modern fiend continues the same English line. OED’s revised 2026 entry marks the literal enemy sense obsolete after the medieval record, explains the Devil as the ultimate Enemy, and documents long-versus-short vowel competition before the long vowel became dominant by the eighteenth century. The Middle English Dictionary independently exposes 188 quotations across eight senses without claiming a complete corpus.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗Gothic class-III weak-verb lemmahistorical form
fijan
A Gothic class-III weak verb conventionally glossed hate or detest. Project Wulfila currently exposes 42 candidate tokens under fijan: 13 verified, eight further lexically unambiguous, and 21 explicitly ambiguous with the masculine nd-stem noun fijands, enemy. The surface inventory contains fifteen written shapes, including one exact infinitive fijan in John 7:7 and four j-less forms. Ayora Estevan shows why the overlap cannot be normalized away: Proto-Germanic had already lexicalized *fi(j)and- as enemy, while Gothic still used the matching present-participial formation for one who hates.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗Gothic masculine nd-stem common nounhistorical form
fijands
A Gothic masculine nd-stem noun conventionally glossed enemy. Project Wulfila currently exposes 26 candidates: three verified noun assignments, two further noun-only assignments, and 21 surface forms also listed under the living verb fijan. Ayora Estevan explains the collision diachronically: Proto-Germanic had already lexicalized the present-participial *fi(j)and- as enemy, while Gothic retained productive one-who-hates participles beside the noun. The five noun-only candidates use fiand, fijands, fijande, and fijandis; all five were inspected in Codex Argenteus facsimiles.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗0212
ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY
HISTORICAL FORMS
*
Proto-Germanic / Indo-European
*wardaz
guard; guardian
- DATE
- Proto-Germanic
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 0
Proto-Germanic / Indo-European
*fi(j)ēn-
a reconstructed verb meaning hate or be hostile toward
- DATE
- Proto-Germanic reconstruction
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 14
Proto-Indo-European / Indo-European
*per-
forward, through, before, toward
- DATE
- Proto-Indo-European horizon
- 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
Classical Arabic / Afro-Asiatic
Khwārizm
Khwārizm, a region south of the Aral Sea
- DATE
- early medieval and older geographic record
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 2
Latin / Indo-European
ad-
to, toward
- DATE
- Latin antiquity
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 0
Classical Arabic / Afro-Asiatic
al-Khwārizmī
the Khwārizmian; name of Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī
- DATE
- 9th century
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 2
Present-Day English / Indo-European
checkmate
an inescapable chess defeat; complete thwarting
- DATE
- 14th century–today
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Middle English / Indo-European
chek / chekke
a chess warning; assault, adverse event, restraint
- DATE
- 14th–15th centuries
- 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
Middle English / Indo-European
conscience
awareness of conduct, morality, or inward knowledge
- DATE
- Middle English, 13th–15th centuries
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Anglo-French / Indo-European
conscience
conscience, consciousness, or inward awareness
- DATE
- Anglo-French period
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
0323
WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED
CLAIMS & DISPUTES
SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 12
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.
openprobableposition text
Did English chai come from one identifiable donor language?
The modern culinary sense strongly points toward South Asian usage, but Merriam-Webster lists Turkish, Russian, Persian, Hindi, and Urdu source forms without selecting one unique donor.
openestablishedposition text
Does Lexicon Poeticum establish exactly ten or eleven poetic tokens?
No definitive total is promoted. The h-word list reports ten, while the headword page exposes eleven linked rows including variants; the project warns that the concordance is unreviewed.
openprobableposition text
Is hazzōn straightforwardly one class-II verb?
The ōn citation form has class-II morphology, but the historical record also preserves ēn forms associated with class III. Corpus-wide scholarship treats such double forms as a real Old High German problem rather than a typographic nuisance.
openprobableposition text
Did “gather” straightforwardly become “speak”?
The collect/say comparison is old and substantial, but a neat story about “gathering words” exceeds what the comparative forms alone can prove.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Can Freund historically refer to a woman?
Yes. Grimm records older and contextual uses of the masculine noun for female referents. Grammatical gender and referent sex are not identical.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Does the friendly-rivalry sense come from Old High German evidence?
Not in the reviewed record. DWB says hostile disposition is exclusively attested in Old High German and places the friendly-rivalry passage in Middle High German Erec.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Was candor originally frankness?
Not exclusively. Its earliest English family includes brightness and unstained purity; straightforward honesty becomes the dominant modern sense.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Did check begin with verification?
No. The oldest sequence starts with chess, then stop and restraint; verification and banking are later semantic branches.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Did conscience always mean only a moral judge?
No. Moral awareness is early and central, but the Latin family and an obsolete English sense also include consciousness or general awareness.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Does feign descend from faint or feint?
No direct descent is established here. The root appendix groups them under the same nasalized shaping formation, while feign has its own documented French and Latin chain.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Does the spelling fiend preserve one unchanged pronunciation?
No. OED reports coexisting long and short vowels in Middle and early modern English and says the long vowel became dominant by the eighteenth century.
CONTRARIAN TRUTHS / 11
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 36GRADE Aranked reveal
German Feind is English fiend’s undemonic cousin: both fossilize one who hates.
Duden, DWDS/Pfeifer, and Grimm independently carry Feind through Middle and Old High German to a substantivized hating participle. OED places English fiend on the collateral Old English branch. German retained the ordinary enemy or opponent at its semantic center; English turned the cognate toward Devil, demon, and vicious person.
RANK 46GRADE Aranked reveal
Old High German hazzōn is a paradigm fault line, not proof that hate originally meant pursue.
The clean dictionary headword conceals paired ēn and ōn forms: Starling reports hazzēn in the eighth century and hazzōn in the ninth, Duden prints haʒʒēn and haʒʒōn, and the UT reflex index also records hazēn and hazōn. Corpus-wide research confirms that Old High German ēn verbs can show ōn double forms. DWB reports aemulari and insequi alignments that support emulation, following, or hostile pursuit—but Pokorny’s comparative warning is exact: Germanic evidence does not prove that pursue was the root’s basic meaning. The normalized form, the source-reported tokens, the paradigm analysis, and the prehistoric semantic claim are four different evidence layers.
RANK 69GRADE Aranked reveal
Your bank check began as a threat to a king.
Persian šāh becomes a chess warning, French eschec, and English check. Stop and restraint later produce verification and the anti-forgery counterfoil behind the bank draft.
RANK 122GRADE Aranked reveal
Girl could once refer to a boy.
Middle English girle could denote a child of either sex; later English narrowed it toward a female child or young woman.
RANK 136GRADE Acontrarian claim
Old English turned hate into people-hate, murder-hate, weapon-hate, and war-hate.
Bosworth–Toller lists leód-, morþor-, wǽpen-, and wíg-hete among eleven derived formations. Clark Hall adds hostile speech, a hostile blow, a hostile design, and a charm for producing hate. The noun was a word-building base, not merely a private feeling label.
RANK 142GRADE Aranked reveal
Conscious began as knowing—including knowing with another.
Latin cōnscius could describe awareness or knowledge shared with another person. English later centered the word on private awareness, wakefulness, and deliberate action.
RANK 146GRADE Aranked reveal
The k in kapu is a fossilized sound change.
Hawaiian kapu and Māori tapu are not misspellings of one another: Hawaiian regularly changed inherited *t toward k while preserving the sacred and prohibited semantic field.
RANK 147GRADE Aranked reveal
An 11th-century mention is not an 11th-century mass habit.
Bīrūnī’s report establishes Persian scholarly awareness of čāy; it does not date widespread Persian drinking, and Iranica leaves the adoption mechanism unknown.
RANK 163GRADE Aranked reveal
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 166GRADE Aranked reveal
Conscience was not always only the moral judge.
The word's recorded family also includes consciousness and awareness. Moral self-judgment became central inside a wider history of knowing.
046
BOOKS / DICTIONARIES / ARTICLES / DATABASES
SOURCES
book chapter19 CLAIM LINKS
Toward a constructional framework for research on language change
Elizabeth Closs Traugott / 2014
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗digital critical edition8 CLAIM LINKS
Electronic Beowulf, Fifth Edition
Kevin Kiernan, editor and designer · Emil Iacob, software engineer / 2026
author or editorAUDIT EVERY USE ↗scholarly reference6 CLAIM LINKS
Lecture 23: Historical Linguistics — Latin rēx, rēgis, and sound change
Norvin W. Richards / 2022
publisherAUDIT EVERY USE ↗digitized primary source5 CLAIM LINKS
De Bello Gallico — Latin edition in the Scaife Viewer
Gaius Julius Caesar; T. Rice Holmes, editor / 1914
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗etymological dictionary3 CLAIM LINKS
robota — Słownik etymologiczny
University of Warsaw Editors / 2026
author or editorAUDIT EVERY USE ↗scholarly reference0 CLAIM LINKS
Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Musa Al-Khwarizmi
J. J. O'Connor and E. F. Robertson / 1999
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗053
FIRST USES & HISTORICAL OBJECTS
ATTESTATION WITNESSES
DIRECTLY INSPECTEDmanuscript
Codex Argenteus, Matthew 5:44
fijands / fijands / early 6th century
Codex Argenteus facsimile 6 — folio 3v, Matthew 5:42–47witness excerpt / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Foul Fiend as Devil
fiend / fiend / 1608
Oxford English Dictionary — fiend, n., revised 2026witness excerpt / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Enemy of the country
Feind / Feind / eighteenth-century German, source-reported
Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm — feind, m.witness 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.