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.
MODERN ENTRY POINTS
WORD DOSSIERS
candidate
A person seeking selection or office; ultimately the Roman office-seeker dressed in a bright white toga.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗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 ↗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 ↗ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY
HISTORICAL FORMS
WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED
CLAIMS & DISPUTES
SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 12
Did candidates claim moral purity?
The whitened toga is historical and lexical. Reading it as a guaranteed moral-purity claim goes beyond what the word formation alone proves.
Is *kand- a secure endpoint?
No. The Latin candēre family is attested, but its deeper reconstructed root and cognate set remain analysis-dependent.
Which Aboriginal language supplied boomerang?
Dharug bumarin and a Dharawal bou-mar-rang form are published candidates, but the Australian National Dictionary Centre says the exact source language remains uncertain.
Can the nd-ending alone distinguish enemy from one who hates?
No. The noun and productive participle share surface inflection. Case, complementation, agreement, and context resolve some passages, but Project Wulfila leaves 21 candidates lexically and morphosyntactically ambiguous.
Does the Luke lexical swap resolve the remaining 21 noun-participle candidates?
No. Luke 1:71 and 6:27 show that fijan and hatan can exchange the work of enemies and those hating, but those two contextual alignments do not determine every other fijand- token.
Does the surviving corpus contain 42 secure verb tokens?
No. Project Wulfila exposes 42 candidates under fijan, but only 13 are verified, eight more are lexically unambiguous but unverified, and 21 are explicitly shared with the fijands noun inventory.
Is the infinitive fijan itself written?
Yes, once in the current inventory: John 7:7 writes fijan. The other 41 candidates are inflected forms, and fian is a normalized variant redirect rather than a separately inventoried exact infinitive token.
Do 42 candidate tokens measure spoken Gothic frequency?
No. They measure a bounded, fragmentary textual corpus with duplicate manuscript witnesses, biblical translation effects, and unresolved lemma assignments.
Does the surviving corpus contain 26 secure noun tokens?
No. Project Wulfila exposes 26 candidates under fijands: three verified, two further noun-only but unverified, and 21 explicitly shared with the fijan verb inventory.
Do 26 candidates measure spoken Gothic frequency?
No. They measure a bounded fragmentary textual corpus with biblical translation effects, ambiguous lemma assignments, and duplicate manuscript witnesses.
Is hatan the normalized Old Saxon headword?
No. It is the exact manuscript-M infinitive at Heliand 1451. Köbler normalizes the lexeme as hatōn and reports manuscript C haton at the same locus.
Are κῆδος and kêdos separate Ancient Greek lexemes?
No. Merriam-Webster uses the Latin-script transliteration kêdos for the same Greek noun that LSJ indexes as κῆδος.
CONTRARIAN TRUTHS / 3
A candidate was “dressed in white.”
Roman office-seekers signaled purity and visibility with a whitened toga.
Enemy is a fossilized hater—but 21 Gothic tokens still refuse to choose.
Project Wulfila lists 42 candidates under fijan and 26 under the enemy noun fijands. Their intersection is exactly 21 surface tokens. Ayora Estevan explains the collision: *fi(j)and- had lexicalized as enemy before Gothic, while Gothic still possessed the productive present participle one who hates. Case and syntax resolve some passages; the remaining 21 stay public as noun-versus-participle ambiguity.
Enemy is a fossilized hater—but lexicalization does not make every token transparent.
Project Wulfila lists 26 candidates under the Gothic enemy noun and 42 under the verb fijan; exactly 21 surface tokens belong to both inventories. Ayora Estevan explains why: Proto-Germanic had already lexicalized one who hates as enemy, while Gothic retained the productive participle. The five noun-only tokens are directly inspected; the 21-token overlap remains public instead of being counted twice as certainty.
BOOKS / DICTIONARIES / ARTICLES / DATABASES
SOURCES
Candidate — Word History
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
title prefixAUDIT EVERY USE ↗Lemma fijan — Gothic dictionary and 42-token candidate inventory
Project Wulfila editors · Wilhelm Streitberg / 2026
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗Lemma fijands — Gothic enemy noun and 26-token candidate inventory
Project Wulfila editors · Wilhelm Streitberg / 2026
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗Étymologie: candidat / candidate
CNRTL Editors
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗FIRST USES & HISTORICAL OBJECTS
ATTESTATION WITNESSES
English lexical record
candidate / candidate / c. 1600
Candidate — Word Historyexact attested form / OPEN RECORD ↗Codex Argenteus, Matthew 6:24
fijan / fijan / early 6th-century witness, source-reported
Lemma fijan — Gothic dictionary and 42-token candidate inventoryreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗Codex Argenteus, John 7:7
fijan / fijan / early 6th-century witness, source-reported
Lemma fijan — Gothic dictionary and 42-token candidate inventoryreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗Codex Argenteus, John 15:18
fijan / fijan / early 6th-century witness, source-reported
Lemma fijan — Gothic dictionary and 42-token candidate inventoryreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗Codex Argenteus, John 15:18
fijan / fijan / early 6th-century witness, source-reported
Lemma fijan — Gothic dictionary and 42-token candidate inventoryreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗Codex Argenteus, John 15:19
fijan / fijan / early 6th-century witness, source-reported
Lemma fijan — Gothic dictionary and 42-token candidate inventoryreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗Codex Argenteus, John 15:23
fijan / fijan / early 6th-century witness, source-reported
Lemma fijan — Gothic dictionary and 42-token candidate inventoryreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗Codex Argenteus, John 15:23
fijan / fijan / early 6th-century witness, source-reported
Lemma fijan — Gothic dictionary and 42-token candidate inventoryreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗Codex Argenteus, John 15:24
fijan / fijan / early 6th-century witness, source-reported
Lemma fijan — Gothic dictionary and 42-token candidate inventoryreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗Codex Argenteus, John 15:25
fijan / fijan / early 6th-century witness, source-reported
Lemma fijan — Gothic dictionary and 42-token candidate inventoryreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗Codex Argenteus, John 17:14
fijan / fijan / early 6th-century witness, source-reported
Lemma fijan — Gothic dictionary and 42-token candidate inventoryreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗Codex Argenteus, Luke 14:26
fijan / fijan / early 6th-century witness, source-reported
Lemma fijan — Gothic dictionary and 42-token candidate inventoryreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗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.