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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.
0112
MODERN ENTRY POINTS
WORD DOSSIERS
nounexact headword
person
An individual human being, historically from Latin persōna, whose older semantic field includes theatrical mask, character, and role.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗onomastic compound elementdossier summary
-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 ↗German masculine noundossier summary
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 ↗German masculine nounhistorical form
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 ↗German masculine noundossier summary
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 ↗nounhistorical form
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 ↗nouncontrarian claim
algorithm
A finite or stepwise procedure, descended through medieval arithmetic vocabulary from the Latinized name of al-Khwārizmī.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nounhistorical form
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 ↗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 ↗adjectivecontrarian claim
candid
Open or frank in modern English, inherited through French and Latin from a family of brightness and whiteness.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nouncontrarian claim
candidate
A person seeking selection or office; ultimately the Roman office-seeker dressed in a bright white toga.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗adjective · nouncontrarian claim
conscious
Aware, awake, or deliberate; borrowed directly from Latin conscius in the knowing-family.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗0212
ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY
HISTORICAL FORMS
●
Present-Day English / Indo-European
person
individual human being
- DATE
- 13th century–today
- MATCH
- exact historical form
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Middle English / Indo-European
persone
person; character
- DATE
- Middle English
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Anglo-French / Indo-European
persone
person; character
- DATE
- Anglo-French
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Latin / Indo-European
persōna
actor’s mask; role; character; person
- DATE
- Latin
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Proto-Germanic / Indo-European
*-inga- / *-unga-
person associated with or belonging to a lineage
- DATE
- Proto-Germanic
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 0
Proto-Indo-European / Indo-European
*ghos-pot-
guest-master; person embodying a reciprocal hospitality relationship
- DATE
- Proto-Indo-European prehistory
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 6
Proto-Indo-European / Indo-European
*ghos-ti-
stranger, guest, host; person with reciprocal duties of hospitality
- DATE
- Proto-Indo-European prehistory
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 9
Proto-Indo-European / Indo-European
*h₃órbʰos
person or property transferred; bereaved person, orphan, or dependent
- DATE
- Proto-Indo-European prehistory
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Proto-Germanic / Indo-European
*mann-
human being; person
- DATE
- Proto-Germanic
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Latin / Indo-European
-ista
person associated with an activity
- DATE
- Latin and Late Latin
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 0
French / Indo-European
-iste
person associated with an activity or doctrine
- DATE
- French
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 0
isiZulu / Niger-Congo
-ntu
human; person stem
- DATE
- Modern isiZulu
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 0
0324
WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED
CLAIMS & DISPUTES
SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 12
openprobableexact word
Does persōna securely mean a mask through which sound passes?
No secure reviewed etymology derives it as Latin per plus sonāre. The historical sources instead report a probable Etruscan connection and treat the origin as difficult.
openproposedexact word
Is persona to phersu to prosōpon one certain chain?
No. Latin persōna to Etruscan phersu is probable in major references, while the deeper Greek comparison is proposed and contested.
openproposedposition text
Does boy securely descend from a word for ox hide?
No. American Heritage offers a possible chain through a fettered person, fetter, Latin restraint collar, and Greek ox hide; Oxford labels the origin unknown.
openprobableposition text
Does freondum at Beowulf 1018 identify every person as a modern intimate friend?
No. The local text says Heorot was filled with freondum, but the manuscript alone does not recover each referent’s exact social relationship or a modern intimacy category.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Was Gaulish -rīx an attested freestanding word?
No freestanding token is established by the reviewed evidence. Cambridge calls it an onomastic element and Bolelli and Campanile call it the second member of compound personal names. The form is attested through those hosts, while Proto-Celtic *rīx-s is reconstructed.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Does every modern Feind literally mean one who hates?
No. The participial source is historical morphology. Modern Duden senses include personal enemy, hostile power or force, and a determined opponent of something without requiring a recoverable emotion in every token.
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
Did every Germanic cognate preserve the same semantic history?
No. German Feind remains an ordinary enemy noun, English fiend foregrounds demon and vicious-person senses, and Old Norse is glossed enemy or devil. Shared ancestry does not erase branch-specific semantics.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Does the word commemorate an abstract concept or a person?
It ultimately reflects a geographic personal name, “the Khwārizmian,” which became attached to transmitted arithmetic.
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 dialogue etymologically require exactly two speakers?
No. Greek dia- means through, across, or between, not two; both reviewed histories explicitly reject or contradict the two-person restriction.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Is -ist part of the ancestry of etymology itself?
No. -ist creates the English person-label etymologist; the base etymology has its own older French, Latin, and Greek ancestry.
CONTRARIAN TRUTHS / 12
RANK 117GRADE Aexact ranked word
A person was a mask and role before the modern individual.
Latin persōna carries mask, role, and character senses; a probable Etruscan phersu connection and proposed Greek route remain visibly uncertain.
RANK 1GRADE Aranked reveal
A stranger became both guest and enemy.
The reciprocal outsider behind guest and host also became Latin hostis, “enemy.”
RANK 36GRADE Aranked reveal
German Feind is English fiend’s undemonic cousin: both fossilize one who hates.
Duden, DWDS/Pfeifer, and Grimm independently carry Feind through Middle and Old High German to a substantivized hating participle. OED places English fiend on the collateral Old English branch. German retained the ordinary enemy or opponent at its semantic center; English turned the cognate toward Devil, demon, and vicious person.
RANK 43GRADE Aranked reveal
Old Norse hate was action, contempt, humiliation, and feeling inside one verb.
ONP's 101-citation prose article orders four active senses before its participial and reciprocal branches: persecute; despise, reject, or cast aside; mock or humiliate; and hate, despise, or stand hostile. Fritzner independently moves from pursuit and destruction to ordinary hate. A c1200 manuscript leaf visibly writes hata in a command to love chastity and hate no person. The article's sense order is not a chronology, and the poetic concordance is explicitly unreviewed; the reveal is the documented semantic range, not an invented first essence.
RANK 45GRADE Aranked reveal
One Gothic anger verb survives in one question—and not in its dictionary form.
Project Wulfila’s complete current inventory contains one hatizōn token: hatizoþ in John 7:23, “are you angry at me?” Codex Argenteus folio 94v directly preserves the inflection. The manuscript never writes the normalized infinitive or its editorial macron. Grammar then reveals another layer: hatizōn is a class-II verb built from the consonantal stem hatiz- of hatis “hatred” or “wrath.” One English gloss therefore hides a noun-to-verb formation, one surviving grammatical person, and a sharp boundary between pixels and reconstruction.
RANK 89GRADE Aranked reveal
The host could also be the guest.
Latin hospes carried reciprocal host-and-guest roles. The opposition feels fixed in modern English, but the historical hospitality relationship could reverse when obligations were returned.
RANK 90GRADE Aranked reveal
Guest and hostile share a stranger.
Germanic guest and Latin hostis remain separate branches until reconstructed *ghos-ti-. One branch preserved the visitor; the Latin branch developed the outsider and enemy family.
RANK 91GRADE Aranked reveal
A hospital was hospitality before medicine.
The English record begins with lodging and charitable shelter. The medical institution developed inside an older guest-care family rather than naming medicine from the start.
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 Aranked reveal
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 122GRADE Aranked reveal
Girl could once refer to a boy.
Middle English girle could denote a child of either sex; later English narrowed it toward a female child or young woman.
RANK 142GRADE Aranked reveal
Conscious began as knowing—including knowing with another.
Latin cōnscius could describe awareness or knowledge shared with another person. English later centered the word on private awareness, wakefulness, and deliberate action.
043
BOOKS / DICTIONARIES / ARTICLES / DATABASES
SOURCES
historical dictionary7 CLAIM LINKS
Person — Definition, Word History, and First Known Use
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
title prefixAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary4 CLAIM LINKS
Person — American Heritage Dictionary
American Heritage Dictionary Editors / 2022
title prefixAUDIT EVERY USE ↗journal article4 CLAIM LINKS
Persona: storia e significati
Marta Di Napoli / 2005
title prefixAUDIT EVERY USE ↗056
FIRST USES & HISTORICAL OBJECTS
ATTESTATION WITNESSES
SOURCE REPORTEDlexicographic first use
Merriam-Webster first-known-use report for person
person / person / 13th century
Person — Definition, Word History, and First Known Useexact attested form / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Metres of Boethius, Nero as a wicked person
fēond / fēond / early Old English, source-reported
Oxford English Dictionary — fiend, n., revised 2026reporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Fiend incarnate as a person
fiend / fiend / 1694
Oxford English Dictionary — fiend, n., revised 2026reporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
newspaper personal-enemy joke
fjende / fjende / modern example dated 1988 by source
Den Danske Ordbog — fjendereporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Enemy and unfriendly-person contrast
fjándi / fjándi / Old Norse prose corpus; source-reported
Dictionary of Old Norse Prose — fjándi, masculine nounreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Rule text, infinitive with no person
fīēn / fīēn / eighth- or ninth-century Alemannic manuscript; source-reported
Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch — fîênreporting 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.