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 LOCAL1 source section across 1 headword matching “Was”. These are separate from the reviewed results below.
wasEnglish (en) · Unnumbered etymologySource text
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₂wes- Proto-Germanic *was Old English wæs Middle English was English was From Middle English was, from Old English wæs, from Proto-Germanic *was, from Proto-Indo-European *h₂we-h₂wós-e from *h₂wes- (“to reside”), whence also vestal. See also Scots was, West Frisian was (dated, wie is generally preferred today), Dutch was, Low German was, German war, Swedish var); also Kamkata-viri vos-, Sanskrit उवास (uvā́sa). The paradigm of “to be” has been since the time of Proto-Germanic a synthesis of three originally distinct verb stems. The infinitive form be and its derived forms been and being are from Proto-Indo-European *bʰuH- (“to become”). The present-tense indicative forms am, is, and are are both derived from Proto-Indo-European *h₁es- (“to be”). Lastly, the past forms starting with w- such as was and were are from Proto-Indo-European *h₂wes- (“to reside”).
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
nouncontrarian claim
avocado
An English reshaping of Spanish aguacate from Nahuatl āhuacatl, a word documented with both avocado and testicle senses.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗verbcontrarian claim
calculate
To determine mathematically or estimate, borrowed from a Latin family built around counting with pebbles.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nouncontrarian claim
calculator
A person or device that calculates, inherited from a medieval human-reckoner word and the Latin counting-pebble family.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nouncontrarian claim
calculus
A mathematical system, a method of reasoning, or a bodily stone; borrowed from a Latin word for a pebble used in counting.
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 ↗adjectivecontrarian claim
chthonic
Of the underworld or of things in and under the earth; a learned English continuation of the Greek earth family.
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 ↗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 · nouncontrarian claim
conscious
Aware, awake, or deliberate; borrowed directly from Latin conscius in the knowing-family.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗020
ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY
HISTORICAL FORMS
No reviewed record in this collection contains “was.” Absence describes this graph, not all of linguistic scholarship.
0324
WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED
CLAIMS & DISPUTES
SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 12
openprobabledispute-title prefix
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.
openproposeddispute-title prefix
Was the original meaning hostile pursuit or suffering and sorrow?
Unresolved. DWB argues for hostile pursuit or persecution as the original center; Duden glosses the origin as suffering, sorrow, and resentment; DWDS foregrounds hostile disposition, resentment, and enmity.
openprobabledispute-title prefix
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.
openestablisheddispute-title prefix
Was emoticon first used in 1987 or only by 1992?
Merriam-Webster reports first known use in 1987; Etymonline reports the word by January 1992 and quotes an August 1992 explanation.
openprobabledispute-title prefix
Was emotion first used in the 1570s or exactly 1579?
Etymonline gives the decade; Merriam-Webster gives 1579. These are compatible levels of precision, not proof of one first utterance.
openproposeddispute-title prefix
Was fijands still transparently one who hates to Gothic speakers?
The formal relationship was available because the verb and productive participle survived, but inherited lexicalization means ordinary noun use need not have been compositionally reanalyzed on every occasion.
openestablisheddispute-title prefix
Was fjá obsolete at one exact medieval date?
No. Cleasby calls the word obsolete from a nineteenth-century lexicographic perspective, but the reviewed record does not identify a last speaker or extinction year.
openprobabledispute-title prefix
Was Old English frēond still transparently a productive participle in every use?
Not demonstrably. Its history is participial, but OED says it inflects as a strong masculine agent noun and the textual record uses it as an ordinary noun.
openprobabledispute-title prefix
Was every Old English frēond token still a productive participle?
Not demonstrably. OED classifies the word as a strong masculine nd-agent noun, and Bosworth–Toller labels the headword a masculine noun even while preserving its participial history.
openprobabledispute-title prefix
Was the verb formed directly from the noun Hass?
The Germanic weak-verb family is grouped with the *hatiz- noun base, but the exact historical formation and direction are reconstructed rather than directly witnessed in German.
openproposeddispute-title prefix
Was shun the original meaning of hata?
Not established. Cleasby and Vigfússon propose that the poetic dative shun sense was probably original, then immediately say hatta with double t may be the better reading.
openprobabledispute-title prefix
Was the verb mechanically derived from *hatiz- in one recoverable step?
The noun and verb formations belong together, but the exact formation, chronology, and semantic direction are reconstructed rather than witnessed.
CONTRARIAN TRUTHS / 12
RANK 2GRADE Aranked reveal
Truth began with firmness and fidelity.
Before truth centered factual correspondence, its family named what was firm, faithful, and steadfast.
RANK 5GRADE Aranked reveal
Calculation began with a pebble in the hand.
Latin calculus was a small stone used for reckoning before calculation became abstract.
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 11GRADE Acontrarian claim
It was never humanity’s universal ancient name for spiritual practitioners.
English globalized a specific Evenki term through European scholarship and applied it to many unrelated traditions.
RANK 13GRADE Aranked reveal
Legislation came before legislate.
The noun preserves a Latin law-bearing or law-proposing compound. English legislate was later back-formed from the already existing noun family.
RANK 25GRADE Acontrarian claim
Hate was enemy-directed action as well as feeling in Old English.
Old English hatian could mean treating as an enemy, persecuting, or injuring; Beowulf puts the verb beside hostile deeds. The deeper claim that pursuit was the first meaning remains open, and the graph says so.
RANK 34GRADE Acontrarian claim
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 Acontrarian claim
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 38GRADE Acontrarian claim
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 Acontrarian claim
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 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.
RANK 43GRADE Acontrarian claim
Old Norse hate was action, contempt, humiliation, and feeling inside one verb.
ONP's 101-citation prose article orders four active senses before its participial and reciprocal branches: persecute; despise, reject, or cast aside; mock or humiliate; and hate, despise, or stand hostile. Fritzner independently moves from pursuit and destruction to ordinary hate. A c1200 manuscript leaf visibly writes hata in a command to love chastity and hate no person. The article's sense order is not a chronology, and the poetic concordance is explicitly unreviewed; the reveal is the documented semantic range, not an invented first essence.
041
BOOKS / DICTIONARIES / ARTICLES / DATABASES
SOURCES
054
FIRST USES & HISTORICAL OBJECTS
ATTESTATION WITNESSES
SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
German Bible enemy proverb
Feind / Feind / 1483
Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm — feind, m.witness excerpt / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus
Pastoral Care occurrence reported by Bosworth–Toller
hatian / hatian / Old English Pastoral Care record
HATIAN — An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Dictionary Hwitness excerpt / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Wolf as enemy of game and livestock
Feind / Feind / early modern German, source-reported
Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm — feind, m.witness excerpt / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Friendly hawking rivalry in Erec
haʒ / Hass / Middle High German literary record, source-reported
Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm — hasz, 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.