NODE / 0653attestedPresent-Day English

word

TRANSLITERATION wordPRONUNCIATION /wɜːrd/

a meaningful spoken or written unit; an utterance or expression

DATE: before 12th century–today
SENSE: meaningful language unit
FAMILY: Indo-European / Germanic
CANONICAL KEY: node:1:word:attested:sense:meaningful-language-unit

Merriam-Webster reports use before the twelfth century; the normalized start is a display horizon, not a directly inspected first token.

ANCESTRAL EDGES

ROOT OF THIS ROOT

GO DEEPERcontinuationestablished

Middle English · Middle English · meaningful language unit

word

word, utterance, expression

SOUND: Modern English preserves the inherited spelling word while pronunciation continues the history of English vowel and rhotic systems.
MEANING: The core linguistic-unit sense continues alongside utterance, promise, news, command, and technical extensions.
CHRONOLOGY: Merriam-Webster reports use before the twelfth century.
SCHOLAR: Merriam-Webster Editors · American Heritage Dictionary Editors
CONFIDENCE: established

Word — Definition, Word History, and First Known UsesupportsWord History and current definitions

Supplies the inherited English form, current semantic range, and pre-twelfth-century horizon.

ORIGINAL ↗

Word — American Heritage DictionarycontextHeadword definitions and etymology

Independently documents the modern form and Old English ancestry.

ORIGINAL ↗

OPEN CANONICAL EDGE 624 ↗

DIRECT DESCENDANT EDGES

THE NEXT HISTORICAL STEP

No reviewed descendants currently reuse this node. Absence describes the graph, not the entire history of the form.

TRANSITIVE DESCENDANT CLOSURE

EVERY REVIEWED BRANCH FROM HERE

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.

UNIQUE DESCENDANT NODES: 0
REVIEWED EDGES: 0
DEEPEST PATH: 0
MODERN DOSSIERS REACHED: 0

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

ATTESTATIONS / FIRST KNOWN USE

SOURCE-REPORTEDlexicographic first useestablished

before 12th century

Merriam-Webster first-known-use report for word

Source-reported earliest written record located by current scholarship; no underlying Old English object was directly inspected.

word dossier · recorded as word

Merriam-WebsterWITNESS RECORD ↗Word — Definition, Word History, and First Known Use ↗

EDITORIAL REUSE

WORD DOSSIERS USING THIS NODE

01wordword · established