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.
0112
MODERN ENTRY POINTS
WORD DOSSIERS
nounexact headword
rule
A guide, standard, exercise of authority, or measuring straightedge; borrowed through French from Latin rēgula.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗onomastic compound elementhistorical form
-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 ↗nounhistorical form
algorism
The older English word for calculation with Hindu-Arabic numerals, transmitted through French and Medieval Latin from the name al-Khwārizmī.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗verb · nounhistorical form
check
To verify, restrain, mark, or issue a bank draft today; a word whose oldest English history begins with a threatened king in chess.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nounhistorical form
chess
The board game whose English name arrives through French chess vocabulary, with competing scholarly accounts of the deeper Persian and Arabic route.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nouncontrarian claim
chá
The Portuguese word for tea, a European cha-type form associated with sixteenth-century Portuguese contact through Macao rather than the Dutch te-type route.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗verb and adjectivecontrarian claim
direct
To guide, aim, command, or proceed without deviation or intermediary; continuing Latin dīrēctus and dīrigere through distinct medieval channels.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗adjectivecontrarian claim
etymological
Of, relating to, or based on etymology; an Early Modern English adjective whose exact formation is described differently by major historical dictionaries.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗Old High German weak verbdossier summary
fīēn
Old High German fīēn—printed fîên in the Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch—was a weak verb meaning to hate, not love, be hostile to, detest, or reject. The official dictionary says it is attested only in Alemannic manuscripts of the eighth and ninth centuries, then inventories an infinitive fien, present participle fiendi, second-person singular preterite fietos, and accusative plural masculine past participle fieta. Three rule-text records concern hating discipline, one’s own will, or no person; gloss records align the participial forms with Latin exosus or exosos; and an Esther gloss aligns fien with detestari. These are source-reported edition and dictionary records, not directly inspected manuscript objects, and the broad manuscript horizon does not identify one exact first token. A separate twelfth-century article printed fien [sic] with the gloss ubere is explicitly left uninterpreted by the dictionary and is not merged into this hate verb. Beside the verb, Old High German had the already lexicalized enemy noun fīant, whose old participial character could still shine through in fixed phrases. The graph therefore shows a living daughter verb beside a grammatical fossil without pretending that either attested form is the reconstructed Proto-Germanic word itself. No historical sound recording exists and the dossier does not display a fabricated phonetic certainty.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗Old English weak verbcontrarian claim
hatian
An attested Old English verb for hating whose objects include persons, enemies, vices, and deeds. It continues a reconstructed Germanic weak verb commonly represented as *hatōjan-, but published reconstructions vary, its relationship to the noun base is derivational rather than direct word-to-word descent, and the proposed deeper Indo-European route remains semantically opaque.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nouncontrarian claim
kayık
The Turkish word for a small boat, continued from Old Turkic kayguk and analyzed within an internal Turkic history rather than the Inuit qayaq family.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗noun · verbhistorical form
king
An inherited English title continuing Old English cyning and reconstructed Germanic *kuninga-, a formation built on the Germanic kin or lineage base.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗0212
ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY
HISTORICAL FORMS
●
Present-Day English / Indo-European
rule
guide, standard, authority, or measuring straightedge
- DATE
- 13th century–today
- MATCH
- exact historical form
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Proto-Indo-European / Indo-European
*h₃reg-
move in a straight line; direct, lead, rule
- DATE
- Proto-Indo-European centum form
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 13
Proto-Indo-European / Indo-European
*h₃reg̑-
move in a straight line; direct, lead, rule
- DATE
- oldest published Proto-Indo-European form
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 13
Proto-Indo-European / Indo-European
*rēg-
king or ruler formation
- DATE
- Proto-Indo-European lengthened grade
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 7
Proto-Indo-European / Indo-European
*tkeH-
rule, have power, possess
- DATE
- dialectal Indo-European prehistory
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 3
Middle English / Indo-European
-rede / -reden
a state, condition, quality, status, estimation, rule, or relation to X
- DATE
- Middle English
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 0
Old English / Indo-European
-ræden
condition, state, estimation, rule, or relation to the first compound element
- DATE
- Old English
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 0
Present-Day English / Indo-European
algorism
calculation with Hindu-Arabic numerals; an arithmetic rule or procedure
- DATE
- early 13th century–today
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Old English / Indo-European
cyning
king, ruler, or emperor
- DATE
- Old English
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Old English / Indo-European
lagu
ordinance, prescribed rule, regulation, or legal district
- DATE
- Old English
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Present-Day English / Indo-European
law
binding rule, body of rules, or regular principle
- DATE
- Middle English continuation–today
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Middle English / Indo-European
lawe / laue
law, ordinance, or body of rules
- DATE
- Middle English
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
0324
WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED
CLAIMS & DISPUTES
SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 12
resolvedestablishedexact word
Was rule always only an abstract command?
No. Latin rēgula meant a straightedge or ruler as well as a rule, and the physical measuring sense survives in English.
resolvedestablishedexact word
Does rule descend directly from English right?
No. They are deep cousins: rule comes through French and Latin rēgula, while right follows Germanic *rehtaz.
openestablishedposition text
Does the trailing star mean that no nominative form is attested?
No simple rule of that kind fits this entry: Köbler explicitly reports nominative plural hotie and huotia plus nominative singular huoti beneath hōti*. The exact convention remains unstated in the located material.
openproposedposition text
Did Latin lēx originally mean a “collection of rules”?
That semantic bridge and the deeper gather-root connection are plausible published analyses, not an uncontested fact. The root shape *leǵ- versus *sleǵ- is also disputed.
openproposedposition text
Does Latin lēx securely descend from the gather root *leǵ-?
Not securely. A collection-of-rules bridge is plausible and published, but the direction, root shape, and precise cognates remain disputed.
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
Do the three poetic verb records and 222 fjándi prose citations form a direct frequency comparison?
No. They come from different public corpora with different genres, coverage, editorial states, and counting rules.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Were the underlying manuscript objects directly inspected?
No. This review inspected the official dictionary article, not the manuscripts behind its gloss and rule-text references.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Does every Heliand context simply mean hate?
No. The located contexts concern hostile minds, hostile intent, and a ruler becoming hostile or enraged in mind. Those are compatible with hostility but do not force the modern noun hate into every token.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Is English king descended from Latin rēx?
No. King is inherited through Old English cyning from a Germanic kin formation. Latin rēx belongs to the separate straight, direct, and rule family. Translation equivalence does not create ancestry.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Do the chess, card, and supremacy senses reveal the original meaning of king?
No. The inherited ruler title is older; the game-piece and preeminence senses are semantic extensions documented in the modern entry.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Did regular originally mean statistically normal?
No. The reported medieval sense centers on living under or according to a rule; ordinary and standard are later extensions.
CONTRARIAN TRUTHS / 12
RANK 105GRADE Aexact ranked word
A rule was a straightedge.
Latin rēgula named a straightedge or ruler as well as a principle. English authority and procedure descend through that concrete measuring branch.
RANK 18GRADE Aranked reveal
The famous Gaulish ending is -rīx, not decorative -ix.
Cambridge identifies Gaulish -rix /-rīxs/ “king” inside Dumnorix and Vercingetorix and derives it from Proto-Celtic *rīx-s. The r belongs to the historical element; the exact force of that element still varies across individual names.
RANK 19GRADE Aranked reveal
The x of rēx is a whole nominative sound change in one letter.
Latin starts from the bound stem rēg-, adds nominative -s, devoices g to k, and writes the resulting /ks/ as x. Genitive rēgis makes the stem visible—but it is a sibling case form, not an ancestor.
RANK 26GRADE Aranked reveal
Old English hated vices and deeds as well as people.
Bosworth–Toller’s Pastoral Care examples make conduct grammatical: rulers hate their subjects’ vices, and the text distinguishes loving what enemies are from hating what they do. The historical verb therefore records directed moral and hostile judgment, not only an inward emotion label.
RANK 28GRADE Aranked reveal
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.
RANK 69GRADE Aranked reveal
Your bank check began as a threat to a king.
Persian šāh becomes a chess warning, French eschec, and English check. Stop and restraint later produce verification and the anti-forgery counterfoil behind the bank draft.
RANK 78GRADE Acontrarian claim
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 104GRADE Aranked reveal
Right was straight before morality claimed it.
Old English riht and Germanic *rehtaz belong to a reconstructed straight-and-direct family. Justice and correctness are historical extensions inside the same inherited word.
RANK 106GRADE Aranked reveal
Royal and right are deep cousins.
Royal follows Latin rēgālis and rēx through the king branch; right follows Germanic *rehtaz through the straight-and-correct branch. They meet at reconstructed *h₃reg-.
RANK 107GRADE Aranked reveal
Royal reshaped realm.
Realm follows Latin regimen, government, through Old French reiame; American Heritage reports that its medieval form was altered under the influence of Old French reial, royal.
RANK 108GRADE Aranked reveal
Rich was powerful—and its ancestor crossed from Celtic into Germanic.
Old English rīce meant strong or powerful. Germanic *rīkja- was borrowed from Celtic *rīg-yo-, in the same king branch that produced royal and rājā.
RANK 109GRADE Aranked reveal
Direct is a straight-line word before it is an immediacy word.
Latin dīrigere combines dī-/dis- with regere, to guide or lead straight; its participle dīrēctus supplies the straightened form behind English.
042
BOOKS / DICTIONARIES / ARTICLES / DATABASES
SOURCES
055
FIRST USES & HISTORICAL OBJECTS
ATTESTATION WITNESSES
SOURCE REPORTEDlexicographic first use
Merriam-Webster first-known-use report for rule
rule / rule / 13th century
Rule — Definition, Word History, and First Known Useexact attested form / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Rule text, preterite form
fīēn / fīēn / eighth- or ninth-century Alemannic manuscript; source-reported
Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch — fîênwitness-title prefix / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Rule text, infinitive with one’s own will
fīēn / fīēn / eighth- or ninth-century Alemannic manuscript; source-reported
Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch — fîênwitness-title prefix / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Rule text, infinitive with no person
fīēn / fīēn / eighth- or ninth-century Alemannic manuscript; source-reported
Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch — fîênwitness-title prefix / OPEN RECORD ↗DIRECTLY INSPECTEDprinted book
The e-rara object record and searchable scan locate John Harris's dictionary definition of algorithm.
algorithm / algorithm / 1704
Lexicon technicum: or, an universal English dictionary of arts and scienceswitness excerpt / 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.