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
verb
A grammatical word class expressing action, occurrence, or state; English borrowed the label through Anglo-French from Latin verbum.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗adjectiveheadword prefix
verbal
Of, relating to, or consisting of words; also of verbs and, in one modern contrast, spoken rather than written.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗adverbheadword prefix
verbatim
In exactly the same words; English borrowed the Medieval Latin adverb verbatim, built on verbum and -atim.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nounhistorical-form prefix
adverb
A grammatical class commonly modifying verbs, adjectives, other adverbs, phrases, clauses, or sentences; the English term continues Latin adverbium.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nounhistorical-form prefix
proverb
A brief traditional saying or maxim; English received the word through Anglo-French from Latin proverbium.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗German masculine nounhistorical form
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 noundossier summary
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 ↗verbdossier summary
decimate
To destroy or reduce drastically; borrowed from a Latin verb built on “tenth” and first used in English for killing every tenth member of a group.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗verbcontrarian claim
etymologize
To discover, formulate, state, or study etymologies; an English verb formed from etymology with -ize.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗English nounhistorical form
fiend
An inherited English noun whose earliest recorded sense was enemy or foe, not demon. Old English fēond belonged to a Germanic lexicalized one-who-hates formation; Middle English fẹ̄nd preserved enemy, Satan, demon, possession, and monster senses across extensive spelling variation; modern fiend continues the same English line. OED’s revised 2026 entry marks the literal enemy sense obsolete after the medieval record, explains the Devil as the ultimate Enemy, and documents long-versus-short vowel competition before the long vowel became dominant by the eighteenth century. The Middle English Dictionary independently exposes 188 quotations across eight senses without claiming a complete corpus.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗Swedish common-gender nouncontrarian claim
fiende
The ordinary Swedish noun for an enemy, opponent, hostile state, or figurative threat continues Old Swedish fiande or fiände and an inherited Germanic present-participial formation: literally the hating one. Svenska Akademiens current dictionary calls the word Common Germanic and gives the original force hatande; SAOB and Hellquist independently derive the noun from the fi(j)- hate verb behind Gothic fijan and Old Norse fjá. Modern Swedish hata belongs to a separate Germanic hat- family, so fiende is not transparently built from the verb Swedish speakers now use for hate. Historical Swedish also used Fienden for the Devil, but that branch is not the word’s only or current central meaning. All medieval and early-modern examples here are source-reported lexical records, not directly inspected manuscript objects.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗Gothic class-III weak-verb lemmadossier summary
fijan
A Gothic class-III weak verb conventionally glossed hate or detest. Project Wulfila currently exposes 42 candidate tokens under fijan: 13 verified, eight further lexically unambiguous, and 21 explicitly ambiguous with the masculine nd-stem noun fijands, enemy. The surface inventory contains fifteen written shapes, including one exact infinitive fijan in John 7:7 and four j-less forms. Ayora Estevan shows why the overlap cannot be normalized away: Proto-Germanic had already lexicalized *fi(j)and- as enemy, while Gothic still used the matching present-participial formation for one who hates.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗0212
ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY
HISTORICAL FORMS
●
Present-Day English / Indo-European
verb
a grammatical word class expressing action, occurrence, or state
- DATE
- 14th century–today
- MATCH
- exact historical form
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Present-Day English / Indo-European
verbal
of, relating to, or consisting of words; of a verb; spoken rather than written
- DATE
- 15th century–today
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Middle English / Indo-European
verbale
of or consisting of words
- DATE
- Middle English, 15th century
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Present-Day English / Indo-European
verbatim
in exactly the same words; word for word
- DATE
- 15th century–today
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Middle English / Indo-European
verbe
verb
- DATE
- Middle English, 14th century
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Anglo-French / Indo-European
verbe
verb; grammatical word
- DATE
- Anglo-French before 1400
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Latin / Indo-European
verbum
verb; predicate word
- DATE
- Latin grammatical tradition
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Latin / Indo-European
verbum
word, utterance, expression, language, discourse
- DATE
- Latin antiquity
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 5
Latin / Indo-European
verbālis
of or relating to words or verbs
- DATE
- Late Latin
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Medieval Latin / Indo-European
verbātim
word for word
- DATE
- Medieval Latin
- MATCH
- historical-form prefix
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Proto-Germanic / Indo-European
*fi(j)and-
lexicalized enemy formation from the hate verb’s present participle
- DATE
- Proto-Germanic reconstruction
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 10
Proto-Germanic / Indo-European
*fi(j)ēn-
a reconstructed verb meaning hate or be hostile toward
- DATE
- Proto-Germanic reconstruction
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 14
0324
WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED
CLAIMS & DISPUTES
SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 12
resolvedestablishedexact word
Did verb always mean only the grammatical class?
No. Latin verbum broadly meant word, utterance, expression, language, or discourse and also developed the specialized grammatical sense.
resolvedestablishedexact word
Did English take verb directly from Latin?
The reviewed route is Middle English from Anglo-French from Latin, not a one-hop direct Latin borrowing.
resolvedestablishedword prefix
Does verbal historically mean only spoken rather than written?
No. The oldest structural center is Latin verbum plus -alis, of or relating to words; the spoken contrast is one later English sense among several.
resolvedestablishedword prefix
Is -al the lexical ancestor of verbal?
No. Latin -alis is a derivational component of verbalis; the lexical base verbum and the suffix have separate graph branches.
resolvedestablishedword prefix
Did verbatim enter English as an adjective?
No. Merriam-Webster reports the adverb in the fifteenth century and the adjective in 1613.
resolvedestablishedword prefix
Does verbatim mean one isolated word?
No. Its Medieval Latin formation and older Latin phrase family express distributive exactness: word by word.
openproposedposition text
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.
openproposedposition text
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.
openprobableposition text
Are fijan and fian separate Gothic verbs?
No separate lexeme is supported, but the formal history remains analytical. Project Wulfila redirects fian to fijan, Streitberg groups j-bearing and j-less forms, and Sturtevant discusses loss of j in the sequence.
openproposedposition text
Was fijands still transparently one who hates to Gothic speakers?
The formal relationship was available because the verb and productive participle survived, but inherited lexicalization means ordinary noun use need not have been compositionally reanalyzed on every occasion.
openproposedposition text
Does *fi(j)and- securely descend from *peh₁-?
Only through the proposed deeper analysis of its Germanic verb base. The lexicalized participle-to-verb relation is stronger than the Indo-European route, whose intermediate morphology and semantic unity remain reconstructive.
openproposedposition text
Does fjende securely descend from exactly *peh₁-?
Only as a qualified modern proposal. The Germanic noun-and-verb relationship is firmer than the displayed Indo-European route.
CONTRARIAN TRUTHS / 12
RANK 97GRADE Aexact ranked word
A verb was once any word.
Latin verbum could mean word, utterance, expression, language, or discourse before and beside its technical grammatical sense. English inherited the specialized label.
RANK 152GRADE Aranked-word prefix
Verbatim was an adverb first.
English borrowed Medieval Latin verbatim “word for word” in the fifteenth century; the adjective use appears in the reviewed record only in 1613.
RANK 161GRADE Aranked-word prefix
Verbal is bigger than spoken.
The form is built on Latin verbum “word, verb,” and English verbal still covers what consists of words, what relates to verbs, spoken communication, exact wording, and verbal aptitude.
RANK 16GRADE Aranked reveal
Humiliation is evidenced in English before humiliate.
Chaucer’s Middle English humiliacioun occurs in a humility passage; Merriam-Webster reports the English verb humiliate only circa 1534. Christian Latin and French preserve lowering, abasement, mortification, and self-humbling before current definitions center degradation, disgrace, and shame.
RANK 25GRADE Aranked reveal
Hate was enemy-directed action as well as feeling in Old English.
Old English hatian could mean treating as an enemy, persecuting, or injuring; Beowulf puts the verb beside hostile deeds. The deeper claim that pursuit was the first meaning remains open, and the graph says so.
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 27GRADE Acontrarian claim
The Old English verb survives most visibly as an enemy.
The located weak-verb corpus inventory gives hettan only one form: hettende. Bosworth–Toller records that surface family repeatedly under hettend, “enemy” or “antagonist,” including Genesis and the Phoenix. The verb is therefore not a neat recovered paradigm; it is a lemma inferred at the edge between action, agent, and lexicalized foe.
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 29GRADE Acontrarian claim
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.
RANK 31GRADE Acontrarian claim
Gothic’s two hate verbs trade places across two passages.
The complete surviving hatan corpus contains only hatandane in Luke 1:71 and hatandans in Luke 6:27. In Luke 1, fijandam supplies enemies while hatandane supplies those hating; in Luke 6, hatandans supplies enemies while fijandam supplies those hating. Both Codex Argenteus pages are directly inspected. The lexical swap—and the class-III versus class-I dispute—cannot be represented by one timeless translation arrow.
RANK 33GRADE Aranked reveal
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.
RANK 34GRADE Aranked reveal
The Devil entered English as the Enemy—and the enemy was a fossilized hater.
OED’s revised history identifies fiend as an inherited Germanic noun made from the present participle of the hate verb. Old English fēond meant enemy and foe as well as Devil; OED explains Satan as the ultimate Enemy and marks the literal enemy sense obsolete after the medieval period. Cotton MS Vitellius A XV still visibly preserves feondes in a concrete foe’s-footprint scene at Beowulf 2289.
0412
BOOKS / DICTIONARIES / ARTICLES / DATABASES
SOURCES
historical dictionary13 CLAIM LINKS
Verbum — Lewis and Short, A Latin Dictionary
Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short / 1879
title prefixAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary10 CLAIM LINKS
Verbal — Definition, Word History, and First Known Use
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
title prefixAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary9 CLAIM LINKS
Verbatim — Definition, Word History, and First Known Use
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
title prefixAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary8 CLAIM LINKS
Verb — Definition, Word History, and First Known Use
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
title prefixAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical grammar15 CLAIM LINKS
A Gothic Grammar with Selections for Reading and a Glossary — hatan and hatjan
Wilhelm Braune · translated and edited by Gerhard H. Balg / 1895
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary13 CLAIM LINKS
Adverb — Definition, Word History, and First Known Use
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary12 CLAIM LINKS
Proverb — Definition, Word History, and First Known Use
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical grammar11 CLAIM LINKS
Grammar of the Gothic Language — glossary entries hatan, hatis, hatizōn, and hatjan
Joseph Wright / 1910
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary10 CLAIM LINKS
Dictionary of Old Norse Prose — fjá, poetic verb
Dictionary of Old Norse Prose editors / 2010
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗historical dictionary10 CLAIM LINKS
Dictionary of Old Norse Prose — hata, verb
Dictionary of Old Norse Prose editors / 2023
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗digital scholarly edition9 CLAIM LINKS
Heliand Cgm 25 transcription after Schmeller 1830 with Sievers 1878 verse numbering
Johann Andreas Schmeller · Eduard Sievers · Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe / 1830
author or editorAUDIT EVERY USE ↗research database8 CLAIM LINKS
Lexicon Poeticum — hata, verb
Lexicon Poeticum · Skaldic Project editors
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗0512
FIRST USES & HISTORICAL OBJECTS
ATTESTATION WITNESSES
SOURCE REPORTEDlexicographic first use
Merriam-Webster first-known-use report for verb
verb / verb / 14th century
Verb — Definition, Word History, and First Known Useexact attested form / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexicographic first use
Merriam-Webster first-known-use report for verbal
verbal / verbal / 15th century
Verbal — Definition, Word History, and First Known Useattested-form prefix / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexicographic first use
Merriam-Webster first-known-use report for adverbial verbatim
verbatim / verbatim / 15th century
Verbatim — Definition, Word History, and First Known Useattested-form prefix / OPEN RECORD ↗DIRECTLY INSPECTEDprinted book
A tide passage in John Harris’s Lexicon technicum uses check as a verb meaning restrain or impede.
check / check / 1704
Lexicon technicum: or, an universal English dictionary of arts and sciencesreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexicographic first use
Merriam-Webster first-known-use record for hate as a verb
hate / hate / before the 12th century
Hate — definition, etymology, and first known usereporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexicographic first use
Merriam-Webster source-reported Old English record
lecgan / lay / before the 12th century
Lay — Definition, Word History, and First Known Usewitness excerpt / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Gísl Illugason, Magnússflokkr 7
hata / hata / poem attributed 1104; concordance date unreviewed
Lexicon Poeticum — hata, verbreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexicographic first use
Merriam-Webster first-known-use report
feign / feign / 13th century first known use
Feign — Definition, Word History, and First Known Usewitness excerpt / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Snorri Sturluson, Háttatal 19
hata / hata / poem attributed 1221; concordance date unreviewed
Lexicon Poeticum — hata, verbreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Anonymous, Fourth Grammatical Treatise verse 8
hata / hata / poem attributed 1335; concordance date unreviewed
Lexicon Poeticum — hata, verbreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
German Bible enemy proverb
Feind / Feind / 1483
Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm — feind, m.reporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Early New High German proverb record
Haß / hasz / Hass / 1560
Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm — hasz, m.reporting 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.