CANONICAL LANGUAGE GRAPH
TRACE A WORD ↗a small rodent; later many transferred senses
Merriam-Webster reports first known use before the 12th century.
ANCESTRAL EDGES
mouse
DIRECT DESCENDANT EDGES
No reviewed descendants currently reuse this node. Absence describes the graph, not the entire history of the form.
TRANSITIVE DESCENDANT CLOSURE
This is the complete downstream closure currently supported by the canonical graph. Every displayed step is a real reviewed edge with its own sound claim, meaning claim, scholar, confidence, and citations.
No downstream edge has cleared review for this node. This is a graph-coverage statement, not a claim that the historical form produced nothing.
“Every” means every descendant in the reviewed SET-U graph. It does not convert missing scholarship or missing ingestion into a claim of historical completeness. The coverage ledger remains the honest denominator.
RECORDED EVIDENCE
Source-reported first-use period; no underlying manuscript witness was directly inspected.
mouse dossier · recorded as mouseEDITORIAL REUSE