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Find a modern word—or search sideways through reconstructed roots, historical forms, meanings, languages, scholars, sources, claims, disputes, and witnesses.
012
MODERN ENTRY POINTS
WORD DOSSIERS
German weak verbexact headword
hassen
The modern German weak verb for feeling hatred toward a person or for strongly disliking a thing or action. Duden traces it through Middle High German haʒʒen and Old High German haʒʒēn / haʒʒōn and adds that the older verb also meant pursue. Grimm’s DWB makes the semantic contrast explicit: it calls hostile pursuit or persecution the original sense and then describes a later, more muted center in hostile disposition rather than hostile deeds. BMZ and Lexer independently document the Middle High German verb and its literary record. The reviewed ancestry follows the reconstructed Germanic weak-verb alternatives into the *hatiz- family, preserves the qualified *ḱh₂d-es- / *ḱeh₂d- proposal, and then stops.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗Old High German weak-verb citation formdossier summary
hazzōn
An Old High German citation form in the inherited Germanic hate-verb family, printed beside hazzēn and spelling variants hazēn, hazōn, haʒʒēn, and haʒʒōn. Starling’s source record dates hazzēn to the eighth century and hazzōn to the ninth; Duden and Grimm’s DWB group the ēn and ōn forms in the history of German hassen. Corpus-wide research independently shows that some Old High German class-III ēn verbs also occur with class-II ōn forms, but the accessible abstract does not establish that hazzōn is one of its twenty repeatedly attested double forms. DWB reports haʒôn aligned with Latin aemulari and the forms hatamas and hatent with insequamur and insequuntur. Those reports support an action range involving following or hostile pursuit; they are not directly inspected manuscript tokens. Pokorny’s account, as transmitted by Starling, explicitly warns that the Germanic evidence does not prove “pursue” was the root’s basic meaning. The route therefore distinguishes the normalized headword, the combined historical variants, the reconstructed Germanic weak verb and noun family, the qualified Indo-European comparison, and the point where knowledge ends.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗022
ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY
HISTORICAL FORMS
●
German / Indo-European
hassen
to feel hatred toward someone; to feel strong aversion toward a person, thing, or action
- DATE
- New High German and current German
- MATCH
- exact historical form
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Early New High German / Indo-European
hassen
to hate or strongly dislike
- DATE
- Early New High German textual record
- MATCH
- exact historical form
- DOSSIERS
- 1
0313
WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED
CLAIMS & DISPUTES
SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 12
openproposedexact word
Is hostile pursuit the securely recovered original meaning?
Not beyond dispute. DWB calls it original and Duden independently notes pursue, but the surviving examples, the exact weak-verb reconstruction, and the deeper comparison do not recover one prehistoric scene with certainty.
openprobableexact word
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.
openprobableexact word
Is the Proto-Germanic parent exactly *xatēnan ~ *xatōjanan?
The comparative verb family is secure, but its notation and subclass are not singular. Orel prints the alternatives; Merriam-Webster foregrounds *hatōjan- for the related inherited verb formation.
openprobableexact word
Is hetzen simply the same verb as hassen?
No. Duden analyzes hetzen as a causative formation related to hassen—historically make hate or bring to hostile pursuit—while the modern verbs have distinct forms and ordinary meanings.
openprobableexact word
Does hassen securely descend from *ḱeh₂d-?
Only as a qualified proposal. Formal correspondence is published, but grief, pain, care, mourning, pursuit, and hatred do not form one transparent semantic sequence.
openprobableexact word
Did the shift from persecution to feeling happen in one dated event?
No single event is established. DWB describes a contrast between hostile deeds and a more muted hostile disposition, while historical and modern examples show overlapping contextual ranges.
resolvedestablishedexact word
Does modern hassen apply only to people?
No. Duden separates hatred toward a person from strong aversion toward a thing or action and gives clausal-object examples.
resolvedestablishedexact word
Did hassen once express hostile action or pursuit?
Yes in the reviewed historical accounts. Duden says the old forms also meant pursue; DWB labels hostile pursuit or persecution the original sense and cites Old and Middle High German alignments.
resolvedprobableexact word
Are haʒʒēn and haʒʒōn separate unrelated Old High German verbs?
No such split is established. Duden prints both as historical forms of hassen, while the historical sources preserve variant weak-verb formations and spellings.
resolvedestablishedexact word
Does current hassen ordinarily mean physically persecute?
No. Duden’s current meanings center hatred and strong aversion. Pursuit and persecution belong to the historical semantic account, not a requirement of the current standard verb.
resolvedestablishedexact word
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.
resolvedestablishedexact word
Does the 1343 Behaim work establish the first use of hassen?
No. It supplies two located historical contexts, not a complete comparison of all earlier witnesses or a token-level earliest-use proof.
CONTRARIAN TRUTHS / 1
RANK 60GRADE A-exact ranked word
German hassen has an action buried under the feeling.
Duden says Middle High German haʒʒen and Old High German haʒʒēn / haʒʒōn formerly also meant pursue. Grimm’s DWB goes further: it calls hostile pursuit or persecution the original sense, reports Old High German following or pursuit alignments and Behaim persecution contexts, then explicitly describes the later sense as more about hostile disposition than hostile deeds. Modern Duden centers hatred and strong aversion. The contrast is real; the one certain prehistoric scene is not.
043
BOOKS / DICTIONARIES / ARTICLES / DATABASES
SOURCES
historical dictionary32 CLAIM LINKS
Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm — hassen
Jacob Grimm · Wilhelm Grimm · DWDS editorial team / 2026
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗contemporary dictionary26 CLAIM LINKS
Duden — hassen
Dudenredaktion / 2026
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗etymological dictionary3 CLAIM LINKS
DWDS — hassen, etymology after Wolfgang Pfeifer
Wolfgang Pfeifer · DWDS editorial team / 2026
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗0510
FIRST USES & HISTORICAL OBJECTS
ATTESTATION WITNESSES
SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Agricola, Sprichwörter
hassen / hassen / 1560
Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm — hassenexact attested form / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Max Frisch, Homo faber
hassen / hassen / 1957 literary record, source-reported
DWDS — hassen, etymology after Wolfgang Pfeiferexact attested form / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Strong-aversion construction
hassen / hassen / contemporary dictionary example, source-reported
Duden — hassenexact attested form / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Matthias von Beheim, Matthew 5:11
haʒʒen / hassen / 1343 textual horizon, source-reported
Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm — hassenreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Matthias von Beheim, John 5:16
haʒʒen / hassen / 1343 textual horizon, source-reported
Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm — hassenreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Graff lexical record aligned with Latin insequamur
haʒʒēn / haʒʒōn / hassen / Old High German record, source-reported
Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm — hassenreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Graff lexical record aligned with Latin insequuntur
haʒʒēn / haʒʒōn / hassen / Old High German record, source-reported
Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm — hassenreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Graff lexical record aligned with Latin aemulari
haʒʒēn / haʒʒōn / hazzōn / Old High German lexical record, source-reported
Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm — hassenreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Graff lexical record aligned with Latin insequamur
haʒʒēn / haʒʒōn / hazzōn / Old High German lexical record, source-reported
Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm — hassenreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Graff lexical record aligned with Latin insequuntur
haʒʒēn / haʒʒōn / hazzōn / Old High German lexical record, source-reported
Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm — hassenreporting source / 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.