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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 LOCAL3 source sections across 2 headwords matching “prior”. These are separate from the reviewed results below.
priorEnglish (en) · Etymology 1Source text
The adjective is a learned borrowing from Latin prior (“earlier, former, previous, prior; in front; (figurative) better, superior”), from Proto-Italic *priōs (“earlier, previous”, literally “more before”), ultimately from *pri (“before”) (from Proto-Indo-European *pró (“leading to, toward”) and its etymon *per- (“before, in front; first”)) + *-jōs (suffix forming comparative adjectives). Doublet of before, fore, and former. The adverb and noun are derived from the adjective.
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗priorEnglish (en) · Etymology 2Source text
From Middle English priour, prior (“head or deputy head of a monastery or other religious house; predecessor; superior”), from Old English prior, from Anglo-Norman priour, prior, priur, and Old French prior, priur (modern French prieur), and directly from their etymon Latin prior (“ancestor; predecessor”) (whence Late Latin prior (“superior of a religious house or order; abbot; deputy abbot; head of a guild”)), a noun use of prior (“former, previous, prior”, adjective): see etymology 1.
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗PriorEnglish (en) · Unnumbered etymologySource text
From Middle English Prior, Priur (surname), from Middle English prior, priour (“prior”). More at prior.
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.
Lewis’s Elementary Latin Dictionary
1890 American Book Company edition; pinned Perseus XML digitization010
MODERN ENTRY POINTS
WORD DOSSIERS
No reviewed record in this collection contains “prior.” Absence describes this graph, not all of linguistic scholarship.
020
ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY
HISTORICAL FORMS
No reviewed record in this collection contains “prior.” Absence describes this graph, not all of linguistic scholarship.
035
WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED
CLAIMS & DISPUTES
SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 5
openproposedposition text
Is the deepest brightness root *kand- or *(s)kend-?
The graph preserves both published analyses. The newer Merriam-Webster route uses *(s)kend- and explains candēre through a zero-grade stative formation; the prior *kand- route remains proposed.
openestablishedposition text
Was persecution the securely recovered original meaning?
No. The Heliand context supports persecution or endured hostility at one branch locus, but a daughter-language context cannot by itself establish semantic priority in Proto-Germanic or Proto-Indo-European.
openproposedposition text
Was the formation a causative “make hate” or an action verb “make pursue”?
Both descriptions occur, and their priority is not settled here. Duden analyzes a causative to hassen; Orel derives *xatjanan from the hate noun; Bailey and the medieval record foreground chase or persecution.
openprobableposition text
Can the relative sense be proved older than the friend sense?
No. The early records and comparative languages show both social fields, but the reviewed sources do not recover a single semantic priority event.
resolvedprobableposition text
Does the contrast miscais prove that bare cais originally meant love?
No. The contrast is evidence that some contexts oppose the forms, but prefixal morphology and a translated contrast do not by themselves recover the oldest sense of bare cais.
CONTRARIAN TRUTHS / 0
040
BOOKS / DICTIONARIES / ARTICLES / DATABASES
SOURCES
No reviewed record in this collection contains “prior.” Absence describes this graph, not all of linguistic scholarship.
050
FIRST USES & HISTORICAL OBJECTS
ATTESTATION WITNESSES
No reviewed record in this collection contains “prior.” Absence describes this graph, not all of linguistic scholarship.
06
SEARCH IS DISCOVERY, NOT PROOF
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