Etymology

foe

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Today it means: Hostile. Full definition →

Middle English fo ← Old English ġefāh ← Proto-West Germanic *faih
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foe · adjective, noun1

  1. Proto-Indo-European · derived from*peyk/ḱ-“to hate, be hostile”
  2. Proto-Germanic · inherited from*faihaz
  3. Proto-West Germanic · inherited from*faih
  4. Old English · inherited fromġefāh“enemy”
  5. Middle English · inherited fromfo“foe; hostile”
  6. English todayfoe

From Middle English fo (“foe; hostile”), from earlier yfoh, yvo, ifa (“foe”), from Old English ġefāh (“enemy”), from fāh (“hostile”), from Proto-West Germanic *faih, from Proto-Germanic *faihaz (compare Old Frisian fāch (“punishable”), Middle High German gevēch (“feuder”)), from Proto-Indo-European *peyk/ḱ- (“to hate, be hostile”) (compare Middle Irish óech (“enemy, fiend”), Lithuanian pi̇̀ktas (“evil”)).

foe · noun2

Acronym of [ten to the power of] fifty-one ergs, due to equalling 10⁵¹ ergs; coined by Gerald Brown of Stony Brook University in his work with Hans Bethe.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.