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 610French1892–today
étymon
A French linguistic term for an attested or reconstructed form used to explain the historical development of one or more words.
“An étymon does not have to be visible in a manuscript. French reference works explicitly allow the explanatory source form itself to be hypothetical or reconstructed.”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
Frenchétymon
attested or reconstructed form used to explain a word’s historical development
↑GO DEEPER
Latin · Latin scholarly useetymonthe literal or original meaning of a word
- SOUND CHANGE
- French adapted learned etymon as étymon with French stress and a nasalized final vowel.
- SEMANTIC CHANGE
- The technical source-form sense was retained while expanding to include attested and reconstructed forms.
- SCHOLAR
- ATILF · CNRTL Editors
- CONFIDENCE
- probable — CNRTL names Latin as the donor, while the Académie summarizes a direct Greek borrowing; the immediate route remains open.
- CHRONOLOGY
- CNRTL reports the French record from 1892.
2 CITATIONSÉtymon — Trésor de la langue française informatiséÉtymologie et Histoire: 1892; emprunt au latin etymon Étymon — Dictionnaire de l’Académie française, 9e éditionÉtymologie: mot savant emprunté du grec etumon AUDIT CANONICAL EDGE 573 ↗
Names Latin as the immediate donor and supplies the French chronology.
ORIGINAL ↗The Académie summarizes the learned borrowing as direct from Greek rather than through Latin.
ORIGINAL ↗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.