NODE / 0865attestedMiddle English
wif
TRANSLITERATION wif
woman; wife
- DATE
- Middle English
- SENSE
- woman wife noun
- FAMILY
- Indo-European / West Germanic
- CANONICAL KEY
- node:2:wif:attested:sense:woman-wife-noun
A medieval continuation of Old English wīf.
01ANCESTRAL EDGES
ROOT OF THIS ROOT
GO DEEPERcontinuationestablished
Old English · Old English · woman wife nounwīf
woman; wife
- SOUND
- Middle English wif continues Old English wīf.
- MEANING
- Woman and wife senses continue through medieval English.
- SCHOLAR
- Merriam-Webster Editors · American Heritage Dictionary Editors
- CONFIDENCE
- established
02DIRECT DESCENDANT EDGES
THE NEXT HISTORICAL STEP
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
- 1
- REVIEWED EDGES
- 1
- DEEPEST PATH
- 1
- MODERN DOSSIERS REACHED
- 1
HISTORICAL STEP 011 EDGE
STEP 01continuationestablished
- SOUND
- Middle English wif develops into modern wife with the Great Vowel Shift and final silent-e spelling.
- MEANING
- The older woman-or-wife field narrows toward the spouse sense.
Merriam-Webster Editors · American Heritage Dictionary Editors2 CITATIONSEDGE 866 ↗ “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