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START / NODE 481Present-Day English15th century–today
legible
Capable of being read or deciphered; from Late Latin legibilis and Latin legere “to read.”
“Legible is a reading word whose deeper family also means gather and select. Its history runs through Latin legere, not the English body-part word leg.”OPEN COMPLETE WORD DOSSIER ↗
EVERY REVIEWED PARENT, NOT ONE EDITORIAL PATH
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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 Englishlegible
capable of being read or deciphered; later also discernible or understandable
↑GO DEEPER
Middle English · Middle English, late 14th–15th centurylegiblecapable of being read
- SOUND CHANGE
- The Middle English learned form stabilizes as modern legible with later English stress and vowel development.
- SEMANTIC CHANGE
- Literal readability remains primary while discernibility and understandability become figurative extensions.
- SCHOLAR
- Merriam-Webster · American Heritage editors
- CONFIDENCE
- established
- CHRONOLOGY
- The sources place English use in the late fourteenth or fifteenth century.
3 CITATIONSLegible — Definition, Word History, and First Known UseWord History and First Known Use American Heritage Dictionary: legibleHeadword definitions and etymology Legible — Origin and historyHeadword chronology AUDIT CANONICAL EDGE 448 ↗
Documents Middle English ancestry, modern senses, and a fifteenth-century horizon.
ORIGINAL ↗Independently documents literal readability and figurative discernibility.
ORIGINAL ↗Places the English adjective in the late fourteenth century.
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.