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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 LOCAL3 source sections across 1 headword matching “Were”. These are separate from the reviewed results below.
wereEnglish (en) · Etymology 1Source text
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₂wes-der. Proto-Germanic *wēzīn Proto-West Germanic *wāʀīn Old English wǣre Old English wǣron Old English wǣren Middle English were English were Inherited from Middle English were, weren, from Old English wǣre, wǣron, wǣren, from Proto-West Germanic *wāʀun, *wāʀīn, from Proto-Germanic *wēzun, *wēzīn, from Proto-Indo-European *h₂wes-. More at was.
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗wereEnglish (en) · Etymology 2Source text
Inherited from Middle English were, wer, see wer.
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗wereEnglish (en) · Etymology 3Source text
Back-formation from werewolf and other terms in were-, from the same source as English wer, were (“man”) (above).
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- WereMiddle English · word_were_sb_1
Were, sb. a man, husband, S. Comb.: wer-wolf, wer-wolf, S2; werwolues, pl., S3.—AS. wer, OS. wer; cp. Goth. wair, Lat. uir, OIr. fer.
Read the full source record → - WereMiddle English · word_were_sb_2
Were, sb. company, host, S.—Cp. MHG. wer, were: OHG. warí, see Weigand (s.v. wehr). Cf. Ware.
Read the full source record → - WereMiddle English · word_were_sb_3
Were, sb. war, H; see Werre.
Read the full source record → - WereMiddle English · word_were_sb_4
Were, sb. doubt, S2; see Weir.
Read the full source record →
0111
MODERN ENTRY POINTS
WORD DOSSIERS
Middle Irish noundossier summary
cais
eDIL separates two Irish headwords written cais. The first, also recorded as caise, is explicitly explained both as love and as hate; its cited passages and glossary equations range from searc and grádh "love" to miscais and mioscais "hatred", with context deciding individual readings. One Éigse line is tentatively translated so that the same visible form occurs on both sides: "my love ... is met by hatred(?)". The question mark matters. The second eDIL headword cais means "eye" and is excluded from this semantic lineage. These records establish a remarkable lexicographic opposition, not one timeless essence, a chronology from love to hate, or proof that every occurrence belongs to one historically indivisible sense. John T. Koch compares the noun with Proto-Celtic *katsi- < *kad-t/si- and a wider *kad- family, but that ancestry and its proposed Germanic comparison remain open. eDIL itself generally supplies etymologies only selectively. No manuscript pixels were directly inspected, no earliest-use or historical-frequency claim is made, and no exact pronunciation is invented.
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 ↗Gothic masculine nd-stem common noundossier summary
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 ↗Old English strong masculine nd-stem nouncontrarian claim
frēond
Old English frēond is the directly attested source-language noun behind modern friend. OED analyzes it as an inherited strong masculine agent noun in -nd, ultimately a noun use of the present participle of the Germanic base behind free, and documents West Saxon frēond, Northumbrian and Kentish frīond, Kentish frīand, mutated frīend and frȳnd, endingless plurals, and re-formed frēondas. Bosworth–Toller prints freónd and friónd, explicitly links freónde loving to freón or freógan, and supplies examples for companion, ally, relation, friend of God, friend versus foe, and friends acting as arbitrators. OED independently preserves close companion, non-enemy, ally, and kinsman senses in Old English. Cotton MS Vitellius A XV folio 152r was directly inspected at Beowulf 1018, where the pixels visibly preserve freondum in Heorot innan wæs freondum afylled. The route reuses the reviewed *frijōnd-, *frī-, and proposed *prī- nodes and then stops. The displayed pronunciation is a normalized approximation, not a recorded voice.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗Old Frisian weak verbdossier summary
hatia
Old Frisian hatia is a weak verb whose lexicographic field extends beyond an inward feeling. Hofmann and Popkema give hate or reject, damage, and a feud-language expression for harming or pursuing someone as an enemy. A May 2026 Corpus Oudfries search for word or lemma hatia returns six records in 235,462 tokens, but those are not six instances of this verb. Buma's critical note on Brokmer B 101 explicitly identifies its written hatia as atia "rear" with prothetic h, and Nijdam translates the passage as a poor mother being unable to feed her children. That token is excluded from the hate lineage. The five relevant corpus records occur in legal, road, family, and theological contexts: forms hatijen, hatie, hata, and hatien can concern harming or hindering on a road, a writing or event going against someone, or God hating perjury, lying speech, and false witnesses. The current corpus count is a bounded research surface, not a frequency estimate for medieval speech or a claim about every surviving witness. The underlying manuscripts were not directly inspected for this dossier, no earliest-use claim is made, and no exact historical pronunciation is invented.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗Old Saxon class-II weak verbdossier summary
hatōn
The normalized Old Saxon weak-verb lemma hatōn is supported by a four-locus dictionary inventory: Heliand 1451 writes infinitive hatan in manuscript M and haton in manuscript C; Heliand 4915 writes genitive-plural present-participial hatandiero in M and hettendero in C; manuscript C supplies preterite hatoda at Heliand 5423; and GlG supplies infinitive haton aligned with Latin odisse. Those are six witness readings at four cited loci, not six independent lexemes or four manuscripts. The first Munich infinitive and the Munich hatandiero locus were directly inspected. The category problem is deeper than spelling: Köbler also indexes the Heliand 4915 forms under the separate agent noun hėttiand, enemy. The record therefore exposes the exact point where a live participial form and a lexicalized enemy noun overlap. It does not prove that pursue was the root meaning, that every enemy hates, or that every indexed form belongs unambiguously to one synchronic category.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nouncontrarian claim
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 ↗nouncontrarian claim
mussel
A bivalve mollusk whose English history runs through Middle English muscle and Old English muscelle into the same Latin mouse family as muscle.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nouncontrarian claim
salary
Fixed compensation, inherited through French from a Latin term associated with salt.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗noun · verb · adjectivecontrarian claim
salt
Common salt and the wider family of saline substances and figurative savor; an inherited Germanic word in a deep Indo-European salt family.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nouncontrarian claim
μυς
The Modern Greek anatomical word for muscle, continued from Ancient Greek μῦς, which could name both a mouse and a body muscle.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗020
ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY
HISTORICAL FORMS
No reviewed record in this collection contains “were.” Absence describes this graph, not all of linguistic scholarship.
0318
WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED
CLAIMS & DISPUTES
SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 12
openprobabledispute-title prefix
Were hazzēn and hazzōn separate unrelated verbs?
That is not established. Dictionaries group both forms under the history of hassen, while corpus-wide scholarship shows that ēn verbs can acquire ōn double forms. The exact relationship for this lexeme still requires token-level paradigm study.
resolvedestablisheddispute-title prefix
Were Roman calculations literally made with stones?
Latin calculus did name a pebble used on a counting board, and the computation sense developed from that practice.
resolvedestablisheddispute-title prefix
Were the medieval and early-modern witness objects directly inspected?
No. This review inspected dictionary records and a scanned etymological dictionary page, not the Skåne-Lagen manuscript, Söderwall’s underlying medieval objects, or the cited early-modern print pages.
resolvedestablisheddispute-title prefix
Were the underlying manuscript objects directly inspected?
No. This review inspected dictionaries, concordance metadata, and normalized text surfaces, not the manuscripts behind the three poems.
resolvedestablisheddispute-title prefix
Were the underlying manuscript objects directly inspected?
No. This review inspected AWB records and Sievers's digitized text-edition page, not the Tatian, Ludwigslied, Otfrid, or Notker manuscript objects.
resolvedestablisheddispute-title prefix
Were any underlying manuscript objects directly inspected for this dossier?
No. This review inspected the ONW article and its expanded source-reported records, not the Wachtendonck Psalms copies, Leiden Willeram codex, Groningen gloss object, or rhymed-text witnesses.
resolvedestablisheddispute-title prefix
Were the underlying manuscript objects directly inspected?
No. This review inspected the official dictionary article, not the manuscripts behind its gloss and rule-text references.
resolvedestablisheddispute-title prefix
Were the Behaim examples directly inspected in a manuscript?
No. They are located reports in DWB. Browser permissions blocked the available digitized editions during this review, so neither a manuscript nor printed edition object is promoted as directly inspected.
resolvedestablisheddispute-title prefix
Were English love and hate once the same word?
No reviewed evidence connects English love directly to English hate. Middle Irish cais has an ambivalent love-and-hatred field inside a disputed comparison, but that is not a genealogical edge between the English words.
resolvedestablisheddispute-title prefix
Were the Munich hatan and hatandiero readings directly inspected?
Yes. Full-resolution MDZ images of Cgm 25 scans 45 and 142 were visually checked against the line-level transcription and dictionary inventory.
resolvedestablisheddispute-title prefix
Were the Cotton haton, hettendero, and hatoda readings directly inspected?
No. Köbler reports the C readings and Biblissima supplies manuscript identity and dating, but their exact folio pixels were not located and inspected in this review.
resolvedestablisheddispute-title prefix
Were the Cotton, Vatican, Genesis, and Saxon Confession objects directly inspected?
No. Their readings are source-reported through Köbler or the Academy dictionary; no exact primary-object pixels were inspected for those four rows.
CONTRARIAN TRUTHS / 6
RANK 88GRADE Acontrarian claim
Mussel and muscle were once spelling twins.
Middle English could spell the shellfish muscle. The shellfish and anatomical words ultimately belong to Latin’s mouse-derived musculus family, though the naming resemblance itself is not fully recoverable.
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 101GRADE Aranked reveal
To betroth is to bind by one’s truth or troth.
Middle English bitrouthen visibly combines bi-/be- with trouth, the historical fidelity noun before modern truth and troth were cleanly separated.
RANK 137GRADE A-ranked reveal
Middle Irish cais could mean love or hate—and a separate cais meant eye.
eDIL's first numbered cais headword is explicitly explained as both love and hate. Its glossary evidence equates the form with serc and grádh on the love side and miscais or mioscais on the hatred side; cited passages likewise cross the divide. Most strikingly, one Éigse line is tentatively translated "my love ... is met by hatred(?)", placing the same visible form on both sides while preserving the editor's question mark. Then eDIL's second numbered cais headword breaks the spell entirely: it means eye. The unveiling is not that love and hate were secretly identical. It is that written identity, lexicographic grouping, contextual meaning, and historical ancestry are four different claims.
RANK 154GRADE Acontrarian claim
Truth and troth were once one word family in plain sight.
Middle English trouth and Old English trēowþ covered truth, faith, loyalty, and pledged fidelity before the modern words specialized.
RANK 184GRADE Acontrarian claim
Roman soldiers were not paid in salt.
The salt relationship is real. The viral payroll story is not.
040
BOOKS / DICTIONARIES / ARTICLES / DATABASES
SOURCES
No reviewed record in this collection contains “were.” Absence describes this graph, not all of linguistic scholarship.
053
FIRST USES & HISTORICAL OBJECTS
ATTESTATION WITNESSES
DIRECTLY INSPECTEDprinted book
John Harris’s NOTES in Musick entry describes a fixed group of six select syllables formerly used to distinguish degrees of sound.
select / select / 1704
Lexicon technicum: or, an universal English dictionary of arts and scienceswitness excerpt / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Demon-like being
fiend / fiend / circa 1330, possibly composed before 1300
Oxford English Dictionary — fiend, n., revised 2026witness excerpt / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Life of Saint Lutgard, Devil sense
viant / vient / vijand / 1265–1270
Vroegmiddelnederlands Woordenboek — VIANT Iwitness 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.