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 917Present-Day English1796–today
humus
The dark organic portion of soil; an English scientific borrowing through New Latin from Latin humus, earth or ground.
“Humus and human are deep cousins, not parent and child. Latin humus and homō follow separate formations back to the reconstructed earth root *dhghem-.”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 Englishhumus
partly decomposed organic matter in soil
↑GO DEEPER
New Latin · New Latinhumussoil; earth; organic soil material
- SOUND CHANGE
- English adopts New Latin humus without material spelling change and with English pronunciation.
- SEMANTIC CHANGE
- The broad earth word specializes as the organic portion of soil.
- SCHOLAR
- Merriam-Webster Editors
- CONFIDENCE
- established
- CHRONOLOGY
- First known English use is reported in 1796.
2 CITATIONSHumus — Definition, Word History, and First Known UseEtymology and First Known Use: New Latin; 1796 Humus — American Heritage DictionaryHumus 1 definition and Latin etymology AUDIT CANONICAL EDGE 914 ↗
Publishes the immediate source and first-use horizon.
ORIGINAL ↗Confirms the soil sense and Latin family.
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.