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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.
018
MODERN ENTRY POINTS
WORD DOSSIERS
noun · verbexact headword
law
A binding rule, body of rules, or regular principle; a Scandinavian loan in Old English whose deepest secure family means lie or lay.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗Old English verbdossier summary
fēogan
An Old English verb meaning hate or persecute, recorded as FEÓGAN, feógean, fiógan, contracted feón and fión, with participle feógende and a broad present-and-past paradigm. Bosworth–Toller supplies examples whose objects include crimes, evil ways, law, peace, a temple, friends, and people. The verb continues reconstructed Proto-Germanic *fi(j)ēn-. Its active-participial formation lexicalized prehistorically as the enemy noun behind Old English fēond and modern fiend, but the verb, participle, and noun are not one interchangeable category.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗verbcontrarian claim
lay
To put, place, or set down; an inherited causative verb in the same deep lie-and-lay family that produced law.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗adjective · nouncontrarian claim
legal
Of law or permitted by law; borrowed through Anglo-French from Latin lēgālis and lēx.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nouncontrarian claim
legislation
The making of laws or laws collectively; from French and Late Latin legislatio, a law-proposing or law-bearing formation.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗noun · verbcontrarian claim
quarantine
Isolation used to prevent contagion, named through a Romance expression for a period of forty.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗noun · adjective · verbhistorical form
taboo
An English borrowing recorded in 1777 from Tongan tabu, now tapu, within an Oceanic family whose reconstructed form joins ritual restriction with sacredness.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗Ancient Greek neuter nouncontrarian claim
κῆδος
Ancient Greek κῆδος is an attested neuter noun whose lexical record spans care or concern, anxiety and grief, troubles, mourning and funeral rites, an object of care, and connection by marriage. LSJ documents the Doric variant κᾶδος, Homeric plural forms such as κήδεα or elided κήδεʼ, an Aeschylean play between Helen as an object of care and marriage connection, and a warning that some marriage-based readings of Homeric passages are wrong. Comparative sources place the noun beneath a proposed *ḱh₂d-es- formation and *ḱeh₂d- base alongside Celtic and Germanic material, but the semantic unity of care, grief, battle, hostility, pursuit, and hate remains disputed. The dossier preserves the Greek semantic network, the proposed ancestry, and the explicit boundary as separate claim layers.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗0211
ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY
HISTORICAL FORMS
●
Present-Day English / Indo-European
law
binding rule, body of rules, or regular principle
- DATE
- Middle English continuation–today
- MATCH
- exact historical form
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Middle English / Indo-European
lawe / laue
law, ordinance, or body of rules
- DATE
- Middle English
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Present-Day English / Indo-European
legal
of, founded on, or permitted by law
- DATE
- 15th century–today
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Anglo-French / Indo-European
legal
of law
- DATE
- Anglo-French
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Present-Day English / Indo-European
legislation
the making of laws, laws collectively, or business before a legislative body
- DATE
- 1606–today
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
French / Indo-European
législation
law-making authority, action, or body of laws
- DATE
- French, 14th century onward
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Medieval Latin / Indo-European
lēgislātiō, lēgislātiōnem
proposal or bearing of a law; later a body of laws
- DATE
- Medieval and Late Latin
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Latin / Indo-European
lēgālis
legal; pertaining to law
- DATE
- Latin antiquity
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Latin / Indo-European
lēx
law, statute, rule, agreement
- DATE
- Latin antiquity
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 2
Old Norse / Indo-European
lǫg / lög; lag
law; a laying, layer, order, or disposition
- DATE
- Old Norse
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Tongan / Austronesian
tabu / tapu
forbidden, prohibited, unlawful; historically also sacred or consecrated
- DATE
- Tongan
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
0318
WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED
CLAIMS & DISPUTES
SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 12
openproposedexact word
Can Latin lēx and Germanic law converge at *legh-?
Possibly, but uncertain. American Heritage presents Latin lēx from *leǵ- as one analysis and separately allows a possible “laid down” route from *legh-.
resolvedestablishedexact word
Is English law the source of legal—or vice versa?
No. Law comes through Old English lagu from Scandinavian; legal comes through Anglo-French and Latin legalis from lēx. Their shared modern subject matter is not an immediate genealogical relationship.
openproposedposition text
Can the exact date and phonological staging of cynn be treated as settled?
The main sequence—gemination, umlaut, glide loss, and ending loss—is strongly evidenced, but the exact dating of West Germanic gemination and the analysis and chronology of Sievers’ Law remain debated.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Does Portuguese chá disprove the sea-versus-land rule?
It disproves the rule as a universal law, not the global tendency. Portuguese merchants used a maritime route yet Portuguese retained a cha-type form.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Was the relation or kinsman sense absent from Old English?
No. OED cites the Rushworth Gospels and Laws of Cnut under close relation or kinsman. The sense later becomes regionally restricted in English but is attested in Old English.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Did fēogan mean only an inward emotion?
No. The dictionary glosses hate and persecute, while examples take people, crimes, evil, unjust ways, law, peace, and a temple as objects.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Does the Brokmer B 101 passage mean a mother cannot hate her children?
No. In context it says that if the mother is so poor that she cannot otherwise feed or rear her children, she may take something from the wergeld.
resolvedprobableposition text
Are the remaining five records all semantically identical?
No. They range across road harm or obstruction, writing or events going against a person, family-law adversity, and divine hatred; two Jurisprudentia Frisica passages remain only cautiously glossed.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Does law descend from lay—or lay from law?
Neither. They are lexical cousins whose lineages converge at reconstructed *legh-. Law reaches it through a Scandinavian nominal formation; lay reaches it through an inherited causative verb.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Is legal descended from English law?
No. legal is borrowed through Anglo-French from Latin lēgālis and lēx; English law has a separate Germanic and Scandinavian ancestry.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Was the first quarantine forty days?
No. Dubrovnik’s 1377 law required thirty days; the interval was later extended to forty, which supplied the enduring name.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Does every language follow a simple sea-versus-land rule?
No. WALS documents a powerful distributional tendency, not a universal law: 110 sampled languages have Sinitic cha-derived forms, 84 have Min Nan te-derived forms, and 36 belong to neither class.
CONTRARIAN TRUTHS / 6
RANK 183GRADE A−exact ranked word
Law and legal are semantic twins, not direct relatives.
Law comes from Scandinavian “what is laid down”; legal comes from Latin lēx. Only a possible, explicitly uncertain prehistoric route may reconnect them.
RANK 13GRADE Aranked reveal
Legislation came before legislate.
The noun preserves a Latin law-bearing or law-proposing compound. English legislate was later back-formed from the already existing noun family.
RANK 51GRADE Acontrarian claim
Care, grief, funerals, and in-laws occupy one Greek noun—but hate does not secretly mean care.
LSJ's κῆδος entry moves through care and concern, anxiety and grief, troubles, mourning and funeral rites, an object of care, and connection by marriage. Homeric κήδεʼ can be many-troubled woes; Aeschylus can make Helen an object of care while playing on marriage affinity. Comparative sources then place the noun beside Celtic and Germanic hatred words under *ḱh₂d-es- and *ḱeh₂d-. The reveal is not a mystical reversal in which hate “really” means care. Merriam-Webster calls the semantic relations far from transparent, Liberman challenges the wider family's unity, and the Greek evidence itself resists a single linear story.
RANK 74GRADE Acontrarian claim
Lay and law are cousins; the other lays are strangers.
The set-down verb and law meet at *legh-. Lay the poem and lay meaning non-clerical arrived through different French, Latin, and Greek histories.
RANK 78GRADE Aranked reveal
The maritime rule has a maritime exception.
Portuguese chá crossed through Macao by sea yet belongs to the cha-type family usually associated with overland diffusion. Historical tendencies are not laws.
RANK 191GRADE Acontrarian claim
Legal is not descended from English law.
The meanings meet; the family trees do not. legal is Latin, while law is Germanic and Scandinavian.
043
BOOKS / DICTIONARIES / ARTICLES / DATABASES
SOURCES
historical dictionary10 CLAIM LINKS
Law — Word History
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
title prefixAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary3 CLAIM LINKS
Law — Origin and history
Douglas Harper / 2026
title prefixAUDIT EVERY USE ↗scholarly article4 CLAIM LINKS
Old English Reflexes of Sievers’ Law
Elżbieta Adamczyk / 2001
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗057
FIRST USES & HISTORICAL OBJECTS
ATTESTATION WITNESSES
SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Laws of Æthelberht, friends arbitrate
frēond / frēond / Old English law, source-reported
An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Online — freóndwitness-title prefix / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Juliana and Elene, hating the Lord’s law
fēogan / fēogan / Old English, source-reported
Bosworth–Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary — FEÓGANreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexicographic first use
Merriam-Webster source-reported Old English record
lagu / law / before the 12th century
Law — Word Historyreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Árni’s Christian law, GKS 3270 4° variant
fjándi / fjándi / manuscript dated circa 1350 by ONP
Dictionary of Old Norse Prose citation — fjándi in ÁKr 22reporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexicographic first use
Merriam-Webster source-reported English record
legislation / legislation / 1606
Legislation — Definition and First Known Usewitness excerpt / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
G. Callaway, Fellowship of Veld, source-reported by DSAE
ubuntu / ubuntu / 1926
Ubuntu, nounreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Ancient Laws of Ireland citation in eDIL
cais / cais / date not normalized; source-reported
eDIL — 1 cais, noun explained as both love and hatereporting 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.