NODE / 0797attestedPresent-Day English

woman

TRANSLITERATION womanPRONUNCIATION /ˈwʊmən/

adult female human being

DATE: before the 12th century–today
SENSE: adult female human
FAMILY: Indo-European / Germanic
CANONICAL KEY: node:1:woman:attested:sense:adult-female-human

Modern spelling and pronunciation conceal the older compound.

ANCESTRAL EDGES

ROOT OF THIS ROOT

GO DEEPERcontinuationestablished

Middle English · Middle English · woman noun

womman

woman

SOUND: Middle English womman develops to modern woman with reduction of the unstressed final syllable and modern spelling.
MEANING: The female-person compound remains the ordinary adult-female noun.
CHRONOLOGY: Recorded before the twelfth century in English.
SCHOLAR: Merriam-Webster Editors · American Heritage Dictionary Editors
CONFIDENCE: established

Woman — Definition, Word History, and First Known UsesupportsEtymology and First Known Use

Publishes Middle English womman, Old English wīfman, and the pre-twelfth-century horizon.

ORIGINAL ↗

Woman — American Heritage DictionarycontextHeadword and etymology

Independently publishes the wimman and wīfman history.

ORIGINAL ↗

OPEN CANONICAL EDGE 804 ↗

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 the 12th century

Merriam-Webster first-known-use report for woman

Source-reported horizon; no underlying manuscript object was directly inspected.

woman dossier · recorded as woman

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

EDITORIAL REUSE

WORD DOSSIERS USING THIS NODE

01womanwoman · established