The evidence supports both analyses in different editorial systems. Tío Sáenz lemmatizes hettende under hettan; Clark Hall calls it a participle of hatian; Bosworth–Toller lists hettende among the forms of the masculine noun hettend, “enemy.”

Probably not historically, but the surviving forms are easy to merge. Orel assigns hettan to *xatjanan and hatian to a separate *xatēnan ~ *xatōjanan formation; Clark Hall nevertheless sends hettende to hatian, and Bosworth–Toller cross-refers hettan to hatian.

No single gloss exhausts the record. Orel glosses Old English hettan “hate” but Middle High German hetzen “pursue”; the attested enemy forms encode an antagonist, and Liberman argues for pursuit or persecution as an older concrete history.