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
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 ↗checkmate
An inescapable chess defeat and, figuratively, complete thwarting; a compound transmitted through French, Arabic, and Persian chess language.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗mango
English mango, recorded by 1582, came through Portuguese manga, probably from Malayalam māṅṅa. The reviewed route stops there rather than forcing a deeper Dravidian reconstruction.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗-rīx
An attested Gaulish second member meaning “king” or “prince,” visible in compound personal names such as Dumnorix and Vercingetorix and inherited from Proto-Celtic *rīx-s.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗December
The twelfth month in the modern calendar; its inherited Latin name literally identifies it as the tenth month.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗Feind
The modern German noun for a personal, political, military, or ideological enemy or opponent. Duden derives it through Middle High German vīnt or vīant and Old High German fīand, literally the hating one; DWDS dates Old High German fīant and fījant to the eighth century and identifies the Germanic ancestor as a petrified substantivized present participle. Grimm’s dictionary independently compares Gothic fijands, Old English fēond, English fiend, Dutch vijand, and Nordic forms, while warning that its own still-deeper foam hypothesis required confirmation. The reviewed route therefore follows the inherited enemy noun to reconstructed *fi(j)and- and *fi(j)ēn-, then treats *peh₁- as proposed and stops.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗Freund
German Freund continues Middle High German vriunt and Old High German friunt. DWDS/Pfeifer, Duden, and Grimm independently analyze the inherited Germanic formation as a substantivized present participle of the verb represented by Gothic frijōn and Old English frēogan: historically a loving or favorably disposed one. The record is semantically wider than a modern close companion: the historical dictionaries also document neighbor, relative, lover, ally, supporter, patron, address, and euphemistic uses. The graph joins the High German line to the same reviewed *frijōnd- and *frī- nodes as English friend, keeps *prī- proposed, and stops.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗Hass
The modern German noun for intense aversion, rejection, or hostility toward a person, group, or institution. Duden traces Middle and Old High German haʒ to suffering, sorrow, and resentment and records the 1996 spelling change from Haß to Hass. DWDS/Pfeifer reports the Old High German noun from the eighth century and places it in the Germanic family of Old Saxon heti, Old English hete, Old Norse hatr, Gothic hatis, and related forms. Grimm’s DWB preserves a more complicated semantic record: hostile pursuit or action, anger expressed in deeds, ordinary hostile disposition, and even measured rivalry during friendly competition. The reviewed route reuses *hatiz- and the qualified *ḱh₂d-es- / *ḱeh₂d- comparison, then stops.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗Liebe
The German noun for love, inherited through Middle and Old High German and a Germanic abstract-noun formation distinct from the immediate noun ancestry of English love.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗algorithm
A finite or stepwise procedure, descended through medieval arithmetic vocabulary from the Latinized name of al-Khwārizmī.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗boomerang
An Aboriginal Australian borrowing recorded in English by 1824. Dharug and Dharawal forms have been proposed, but the Australian National Dictionary Centre says the exact source language remains uncertain.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗boy
A male child or young man; Middle English also used the word for a male servant or churl, and its origin remains disputed.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY
HISTORICAL FORMS
man
human being; adult male human
- DATE
- before the 12th century–today
- MATCH
- exact historical form
- DOSSIERS
- 1
man
human being; man
- DATE
- Middle English
- MATCH
- exact historical form
- DOSSIERS
- 1
mān-
remain, wait
- DATE
- Middle Persian
- MATCH
- exact historical form
- DOSSIERS
- 1
mān-
remain, wait
- DATE
- Old Persian
- MATCH
- exact historical form
- DOSSIERS
- 1
*man-¹
man; human being
- DATE
- Proto-Indo-European root
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 1
*mann-
human being; person
- DATE
- Proto-Germanic
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 1
*manu-
human being; man
- DATE
- Proto-Indo-European extended form
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 1
manga
mango
- DATE
- Portuguese
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 1
mango
the fruit or tree of Mangifera indica
- DATE
- 1582–today
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 1
mann
human being; person; man
- DATE
- Old English
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 1
mānd
left, at a loss, helpless
- DATE
- Persian chess vocabulary
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 1
māndan
to remain
- DATE
- Persian
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 1
WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED
CLAIMS & DISPUTES
SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 12
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.
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.
Is Malayalam the certain ultimate source of mango?
Portuguese manga is the secure immediate source; Malayalam māṅṅa is probable, not absolute, and no deeper Dravidian reconstruction is promoted in this review.
Did -rīx mean exactly “king” in every compound name?
Not necessarily. The king or prince value is secure for the element, but scholarship distinguishes names where it is determinative from analyses in which it is semantically bleached or intensifying. Each host therefore requires its own compositional claim.
Is the exact phonetic shape of *fi(j)and- directly known?
No. The form is a comparative reconstruction. Optional j notation, branch vowels, and the relation of written historical variants require analysis rather than direct Proto-Germanic observation.
Is the deepest *peh₁- route established?
No. The Germanic verb and lexicalized agent formation are firmer than the proposed Indo-European comparison, whose formal intermediates and semantic unity remain reconstructive.
Can the exact Proto-Germanic pronunciation and paradigm be recovered?
Not completely. Comparative forms support the morphology, but no recording or written Proto-Germanic paradigm survives.
Can the exact lexicalization date of the loving participle be known?
No. The formation predates the daughter-language records and is already nominal in the earliest High German evidence.
Does Freund securely descend from exactly *prī-?
The comparison is published on the shared friend-family route but remains proposed and less secure than the Germanic formation.
Was the relative sense inherited or independently strengthened in Germanic branches?
The sources establish the sense across German and Nordic evidence but do not recover one complete prehistoric semantic tree.
Is the exact Proto-Germanic noun *hatiz- or *hataz?
The noun is reconstructed, and published notation reflects stem alternation and analytical choices. Koch prints *hataz ~ *hatiz- while Merriam-Webster foregrounds *hatiz-.
Does Hass securely descend from *ḱeh₂d-?
Only as a qualified proposal. Formal correspondence is published, but the semantic chain through grief, care, pain, pursuit, and hatred is not transparent.
CONTRARIAN TRUTHS / 12
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.
A supermarket word carries an Indian Ocean contact history.
English mango came through Portuguese manga, probably from Malayalam māṅṅa.
A stranger became both guest and enemy.
The reciprocal outsider behind guest and host also became Latin hostis, “enemy.”
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.
The modern stigma of Weib is not the timeless nature of wīb.
Duden marks modern Weib increasingly discriminatory, while Old High German records preserve wīb in old-woman and wife expressions; the deeper origin remains unresolved.
King is a kin-word, not a royal word.
English king continues Old English cyning and Germanic *kuninga-, built on the kin or lineage base *kunja-. Latin rēx, royal, and regal belong to a different root—and even “leader of the kin” overstates the disputed original Germanic sense.
King comes from the kin family; kin does not come from king.
English kin independently continues Old English cynn and Germanic *kunja-. The royal title is a separate suffixed formation on that lineage base, so the shared letters preserve real morphology without making either modern word the parent of the other.
Kind is not kin with a d—and kindness did not begin as niceness.
Kind and kin descend through separate Germanic formations and meet only at the deeper birth root. The adjective first carries natural, native, fitting, and proper senses; benevolence becomes prominent through later semantic development.
Hatred is medieval—and its -red means neither red nor “more.”
Middle English assembled hate with a dying native element for a state or condition. The compound is younger than its parts; below the secure Germanic hate family, even the celebrated PIE root remains a qualified and semantically difficult proposal.
German hostile agitation still carries a hound’s chase.
The medieval verb drives dogs after quarry. The same directed-force construction is soon applied to people: Middle High German records set people against one another, and Early New High German polemic sets rulers against Christians. Modern political hetzen is therefore not merely “hate” verbalized; it inherits a grammar of making another actor pursue, pressure, or attack.
One Gothic hate verb survives once—in a command to do good to those who hate you.
Project Wulfila’s only verified hatjan token is hatjandam in Matthew 5:44, directly visible on Codex Argenteus folio 3v. A parallel “love your enemies” command in Luke 6:27 instead uses hatandans from class-III hatan. The translation gloss “hate” therefore hides a genuine grammatical and historical dispute.
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
Mango — Word History
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
title prefixAUDIT EVERY USE ↗Man — American Heritage Dictionary and Word History
American Heritage Dictionary Editors / 2022
title prefixAUDIT EVERY USE ↗Man — Definition, Word History, and First Known Use
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
title prefixAUDIT EVERY USE ↗Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic — *fi(j)ēn- and *fi(j)and-
Guus Kroonen / 2013
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗A Handbook of Germanic Etymology — *xataz, *xatjanan, and *xatōjanan
Vladimir Orel / 2003
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗Altsächsisches Wörterbuch — hatōn and hėttiand
Gerhard Köbler / 2014
publisherAUDIT EVERY USE ↗The shortest history of hatred continued and partly concluded
Anatoly Liberman / 2018
author or editorAUDIT EVERY USE ↗Celto-Germanic — HATRED *kad-
John T. Koch / 2020
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic
Guus Kroonen / 2013
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗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 ↗A Comparative Grammar of the Early Germanic Languages — Gothic hatis
R. D. Fulk / 2018
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗Proto-Germanic *xatiz, *xatōn-, -ēn- and *xatjan-
StarLing database editors
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗FIRST USES & HISTORICAL OBJECTS
ATTESTATION WITNESSES
Merriam-Webster first-known-use report for man
man / man / before the 12th century
Man — Definition, Word History, and First Known Useexact attested form / OPEN RECORD ↗English lexicographic first-use record for mango
mango / mango / 1582
Mango — Word Historyattested-form prefix / OPEN RECORD ↗Codex Argenteus, John 7:7
fijan / fijan / early 6th century
Codex Argenteus facsimile 57 — folio 33r, John 7:2–8witness excerpt / OPEN RECORD ↗Codex Argenteus, Matthew 10:36
fijands / fijands / early 6th century
Codex Argenteus facsimile 31 — folio 27r, Matthew 10:34–40witness excerpt / OPEN RECORD ↗Codex Argenteus, John 7:23
hatizōn / hatizōn / early 6th century
Codex Argenteus facsimile 60 — folio 94v, John 7:22–28witness excerpt / OPEN RECORD ↗Heliand manuscript M, enemy command
hatan / hatōn / Heliand composition circa 830–840; Munich manuscript second half of the ninth century
Heliand — BSB Cgm 25, scan 45, folio 22r, hatan locusreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗Heliand manuscript M, arrest scene
hatan / hatōn / Heliand composition circa 830–840; Munich manuscript second half of the ninth century
Heliand — BSB Cgm 25, scan 142, hatandiero locusreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗Heliand manuscript M, Beatitudes persecution clause
heti / heti / Heliand composition circa 830–840; Munich manuscript second half of the ninth century
Heliand — BSB Cgm 25, scan 41, folio 20r, heti locuswitness excerpt / OPEN RECORD ↗Heliand manuscript M, Pilate question
hōti / hōti / Heliand composition circa 830–840; Munich manuscript second half of the ninth century
Heliand — BSB Cgm 25, scan 150, hotie locusreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗Heliand manuscript M, accusation before Pilate
hōti / hōti / Heliand composition circa 830–840; Munich manuscript second half of the ninth century
Heliand — BSB Cgm 25, scan 152, hotean locusreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗Beowulf manuscript, foe’s footprint
fēond / fēond / late 10th or early 11th century
Cotton MS Vitellius A XV, folio 180v — Electronic Beowulf facsimilereporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗Beowulf manuscript, Heorot filled with friends
frēond / frēond / late 10th or early 11th century
Cotton MS Vitellius A XV, folio 152r — Electronic Beowulf facsimilereporting 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.