RECURSIVE ANCESTOR EXPLORER
GLOBAL GRAPH ↗NORTH-STAR FEATURE / ROOT OF THE ROOT
WORD → PARENT → PARENT → UNKNOWNGO TO
THE ROOT.
Do not stop at the first ancestor. Follow every cited route—through compounds, reconstructions, and disagreements—until human knowledge actually stops.
START / NODE 25Present-Day English17th c.–today
clue
A fact that guides discovery—once literally a ball of thread.
“A clue became evidence because a thread could guide someone out of a maze. The semantic pivot was literary, not a sound change.”OPEN COMPLETE WORD DOSSIER ↗
EVERY REVIEWED PARENT, NOT ONE EDITORIAL PATH
FOLLOW EVERY BRANCH.
Compound components and competing routes stay separate. Every arrow retains its sound change, semantic change, scholar, confidence, and exact sources.
01
PARENT ROUTES1 REVIEWED RELATIONSHIP
Present-Day Englishclue
a fact that guides a solution
↑GO DEEPER
Middle English · c. 1300–1600sclewa ball of thread or yarn
- SOUND CHANGE
- The spelling clue became standard for the figurative sense while clew remained literal.
- SEMANTIC CHANGE
- A guiding thread became a fact that guides reasoning.
- SCHOLAR
- OED editors
- CONFIDENCE
- established
THE ASTERISK IS A PROMISE
RECONSTRUCTION IS
NOT INSCRIPTION.
Crossing into a starred form changes the evidence class. The interface marks that crossing, preserves confidence, and never manufactures the next root to make the picture look complete.