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THE GRAPH.
Find a modern word—or search sideways through reconstructed roots, historical forms, meanings, languages, scholars, sources, claims, disputes, and witnesses.
019
MODERN ENTRY POINTS
WORD DOSSIERS
noun and adjectiveexact headword
human
A member of humankind or relating to people, borrowed through French from Latin hūmānus and the homō family.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nouncontrarian claim
bridegroom
A man about to be or recently married; remodeled from bridegome after the older man-word gome became opaque.
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
humus
The dark organic portion of soil; an English scientific borrowing through New Latin from Latin humus, earth or ground.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nouncontrarian claim
man
A human being and, in later dominant use, an adult male human; inherited through Old English mann from the Germanic human-person family.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗noundossier summary
person
An individual human being, historically from Latin persōna, whose older semantic field includes theatrical mask, character, and role.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nouncontrarian claim
shaman
English shaman, recorded by 1698, is ultimately from Evenki šamān. European scholarship later generalized one Siberian term across many unrelated spiritual traditions.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nouncontrarian claim
ubuntu
A South African English borrowing associated with isiXhosa and isiZulu ubuntu “humanity, goodness,” morphologically connected to the human stem -ntu and, in Nguni analysis, an abstract-noun prefix ubu-.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗noundossier summary
woman
An adult female human being; historically a compound of Old English wīf, woman, and mann, human being or person.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗0212
ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY
HISTORICAL FORMS
●
Present-Day English / Indo-European
human
human being; relating to humankind
- DATE
- 15th century–today
- MATCH
- exact historical form
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Latin / Indo-European
hūmānus
human; of people
- DATE
- Latin
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Proto-Indo-European / Indo-European
*(dh)ghm̥-on-
earthling; human being
- DATE
- Proto-Indo-European suffixed zero-grade formation
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Proto-Indo-European / Indo-European
*(dh)ghom-on-
earthling; human being
- DATE
- Proto-Indo-European suffixed formation
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Proto-Germanic / Indo-European
*gumōn-
man; human being
- DATE
- Proto-Germanic
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Proto-Indo-European / Indo-European
*man-¹
man; human being
- DATE
- Proto-Indo-European root
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Proto-Germanic / Indo-European
*mann-
human being; person
- DATE
- Proto-Germanic
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Proto-Indo-European / Indo-European
*manu-
human being; man
- DATE
- Proto-Indo-European extended form
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
isiZulu / Niger-Congo
-ntu
human; person stem
- DATE
- Modern isiZulu
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 0
Old English / Indo-European
guma
man; human being
- DATE
- Old English
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Latin / Indo-European
homō
human being; man
- DATE
- Latin
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Middle English / Indo-European
humain
human
- DATE
- Middle English
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
0319
WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED
CLAIMS & DISPUTES
SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 12
resolvedestablishedexact word
Does human descend directly from Latin humus, soil?
No. Latin homō and humus are sibling reflexes analyzed under the earth root; hūmānus belongs to the homō family.
resolvedestablishedexact word
Was earthling an attested original word for human?
No. Earthling is a modern gloss for reconstructed *(dh)ghom-on-, not a surviving Proto-Indo-European inscription.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Can Feind refer only to a personal human enemy?
No. Duden also records hostile powers, enemy soldiers or troops, threats to a group, figurative natural enemies, and opponents of practices or causes.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Are bridegroom and human directly descended from one another?
No. Germanic *gumōn- and Latin homō reflect different earthling formations that meet only at *dhghem-.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Was a calculator originally a machine?
No. The reviewed English history begins with Middle English calkelatour, a person who counted or computed; the machine inherits that human agent label.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Does modern fiende mean only a person who privately hates someone?
No. SO and SAOB cover personal opponents, hostile states or forces, military collectives, natural enemies, and figurative nonhuman threats.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Did hetzen begin as a modern political hate-speech verb?
No. The Middle High German dictionary centers the verb on driving dogs to hunt and already records transferred human conflict; Early New High German sources later make incitement explicit.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Does human descend from humus?
No. Latin humus and homō are separate formations under *dhghem-; English human descends through hūmānus and homō.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Did Old English man mean only an adult male?
No. Its principal older sense was human being or person; wer and wīf could mark the sex distinction.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Is man derived from the Indo-European think root?
Not in the reviewed American Heritage analysis. It publishes man-¹, human being, separately from men-¹, to think.
resolvedprobableposition text
Does ubuntu literally parse as “I am because we are”?
No at the level of word formation. The lexical sources analyze a human stem -ntu and an abstract-noun prefix ubu-; the familiar sentence is a philosophical gloss rather than a component-by-component translation.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Does woman come from womb plus man?
No. The historical form is Old English wīfman, built from wīf, woman or wife, and mann, human being or person.
CONTRARIAN TRUTHS / 7
RANK 116GRADE Aexact ranked word
Human reaches earth as a reconstructed earthling, not a direct dirt word.
Latin hūmānus belongs with homō; comparative analysis derives homō from *(dh)ghom-on-, an earthling formation on *dhghem-, earth.
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 112GRADE Aranked reveal
Woman does not contain womb.
Old English wīfman combines wīf, woman or wife, with mann, human being or person; contraction hid the compound in plain sight.
RANK 113GRADE Acontrarian claim
Man was a human word before adult male became its center of gravity.
Old English mann principally meant a human being or person, while wer and wīf could mark male and female.
RANK 125GRADE Acontrarian claim
Human does not descend from humus.
Latin humus and homō are sibling formations under *dhghem-; the English words meet only at reconstructed depth.
RANK 185GRADE Aranked reveal
A calculator was a person before it was a device.
Middle English calkelatour named someone who counted or computed. The machine later inherited the human arithmetic agent's title.
RANK 205GRADE B+ranked reveal
Its morphology is not a sentence.
Ubuntu is analyzed as an abstract-noun formation on the human stem -ntu. “I am because we are” is a philosophical gloss, not a literal morpheme-by-morpheme translation.
047
BOOKS / DICTIONARIES / ARTICLES / DATABASES
SOURCES
historical dictionary8 CLAIM LINKS
Human — Definition, Word History, and First Known Use
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
title prefixAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary5 CLAIM LINKS
Human — American Heritage Dictionary
American Heritage Dictionary Editors / 2022
title prefixAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary19 CLAIM LINKS
Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm — feind, m.
Jacob Grimm · Wilhelm Grimm · Trier Center for Digital Humanities / 2025
author or editorAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary6 CLAIM LINKS
Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch — haz, Old Saxon hetias in the Saxon Confession
Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig · Trier Center for Digital Humanities / 2026
author or editorAUDIT EVERY USE ↗lexical database5 CLAIM LINKS
Corpus of Latin Dictionaries: candidatus
Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities
author or editorAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary5 CLAIM LINKS
Mittelhochdeutsches Wörterbuch — haʒʒe, swv.
Georg Friedrich Benecke · Wilhelm Müller · Friedrich Zarncke / 1854
publisherAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary3 CLAIM LINKS
Mittelhochdeutsches Handwörterbuch — haʒʒen, swv.
Matthias Lexer / 1872
publisherAUDIT EVERY USE ↗052
FIRST USES & HISTORICAL OBJECTS
ATTESTATION WITNESSES
SOURCE REPORTEDlexicographic first use
Merriam-Webster first-known-use report for human
human / human / 15th century
Human — Definition, Word History, and First Known Useexact attested form / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Dream of the Rood, human enemies
fēond / fēond / Old English, source-reported
An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Online — feóndreporting 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.