NODE / 0831attestedPresent-Day English

person

TRANSLITERATION personPRONUNCIATION /ˈpɜːrsən/

individual human being

DATE: 13th century–today
SENSE: individual human
FAMILY: Indo-European / Germanic
CANONICAL KEY: node:1:person:attested:sense:individual-human

The modern individual sense continues a word with older role and mask senses.

ANCESTRAL EDGES

ROOT OF THIS ROOT

GO DEEPERcontinuationestablished

Middle English · Middle English · person role

persone

person; character

SOUND: Modern person continues Middle English persone with loss of final unstressed e and stabilized spelling.
MEANING: Role and individual reference develop into the modern person noun.
CHRONOLOGY: Recorded in the thirteenth century.
SCHOLAR: Merriam-Webster Editors · American Heritage Dictionary Editors
CONFIDENCE: established

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

Publishes Middle English persone and the thirteenth-century horizon.

ORIGINAL ↗

Person — American Heritage DictionarycontextHeadword etymology

Independently supplies the medieval and Latin history.

ORIGINAL ↗

OPEN CANONICAL EDGE 833 ↗

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

13th century

Merriam-Webster first-known-use report for person

Century-level source report; no underlying object was directly inspected.

person dossier · recorded as person

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

EDITORIAL REUSE

WORD DOSSIERS USING THIS NODE

01personperson · established