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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 497Present-Day EnglishMiddle English continuation–today
law
A binding rule, body of rules, or regular principle; a Scandinavian loan in Old English whose deepest secure family means lie or lay.
“Law and legal are not direct relatives. Law is Germanic and Scandinavian—what is laid down—while legal is Latin through lēx. A possible deeper convergence is published, but uncertain.”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 Englishlaw
binding rule, body of rules, or regular principle
↑GO DEEPER
Middle English · Middle Englishlawe / lauelaw, ordinance, or body of rules
- SOUND CHANGE
- Middle English lawe / laue stabilizes as law while later English vowel history produces the modern pronunciation.
- SEMANTIC CHANGE
- The inherited legal-rule sense expands to bodies of law, professions, and regular principles in science.
- SCHOLAR
- Merriam-Webster · Etymonline editors
- CONFIDENCE
- established
- CHRONOLOGY
- Modern spelling postdates the source-reported Old and Middle English forms.
2 CITATIONSLaw — Word HistoryWord History: Middle English from Old English lagu; First Known Use Law — Origin and historyHeadword history and later senses AUDIT CANONICAL EDGE 464 ↗
Documents the inherited English headword, Scandinavian source, and early horizon.
ORIGINAL ↗Documents Middle English laue and the expansion into physical, legal, and institutional senses.
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.