NODE / 0799attestedOld English
wīfman
TRANSLITERATION wīfman
woman; female person
- DATE
- Old English
- SENSE
- female person compound
- FAMILY
- Indo-European / West Germanic
- CANONICAL KEY
- node:3:wifman:attested:sense:female-person-compound
A compound whose two components are modeled separately in the canonical graph.
01ANCESTRAL EDGES
ROOT OF THIS ROOT
GO DEEPERcompound componentestablished
Old English · Old English · woman wife nounwīf
woman; wife
- SOUND
- Old English wīfman contains wīf as its first lexical component.
- MEANING
- Woman or wife combines with the separately modeled human-person component mann.
- CHRONOLOGY
- A morphological relation inside Old English, not a borrowing event.
- SCHOLAR
- Merriam-Webster Editors · American Heritage Dictionary Editors
- CONFIDENCE
- established
GO DEEPERcompound componentestablished
Old English · Old English · human personmann
human being; person; man
- SOUND
- Old English wīfman contains mann as its second lexical component beside wīf.
- MEANING
- The historical human-being or person sense specializes the compound as female person.
- CHRONOLOGY
- A morphological relation inside Old English.
- SCHOLAR
- Merriam-Webster Editors · American Heritage Dictionary Editors
- CONFIDENCE
- established
02DIRECT DESCENDANT EDGES
THE NEXT HISTORICAL STEP
DESCENDANTcontinuationestablished
Middle English · Middle English · woman nounwomman
woman
- SOUND
- Old English wīfman contracts and assimilates into Middle English womman.
- MEANING
- The compound remains a woman noun while its internal morphology becomes opaque.
- SCHOLAR
- Merriam-Webster Editors · American Heritage Dictionary Editors
- CONFIDENCE
- established
03TRANSITIVE 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
- 2
- REVIEWED EDGES
- 2
- DEEPEST PATH
- 2
- MODERN DOSSIERS REACHED
- 1
HISTORICAL STEP 011 EDGE
STEP 01continuationestablished
- SOUND
- Old English wīfman contracts and assimilates into Middle English womman.
- MEANING
- The compound remains a woman noun while its internal morphology becomes opaque.
Merriam-Webster Editors · American Heritage Dictionary Editors2 CITATIONSEDGE 805 ↗ HISTORICAL STEP 021 EDGE
STEP 02continuationestablished
- 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.
Merriam-Webster Editors · American Heritage Dictionary Editors2 CITATIONSEDGE 804 ↗ “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.
04RECORDED EVIDENCE
ATTESTATIONS / FIRST KNOWN USE
NO RECORDED WITNESS ATTACHED.The reviewed graph does not yet attach a source-reported or directly inspected witness to this canonical form.
05EDITORIAL REUSE
WORD DOSSIERS USING THIS NODE