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 802Present-Day Englishbefore the 12th century–today
man
A human being and, in later dominant use, an adult male human; inherited through Old English mann from the Germanic human-person family.
“The oldest English center of man was human being or person, not exclusively adult male; wer and wīf once made the sex distinction.”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 Englishman
human being; adult male human
↑GO DEEPER
Middle English · Middle Englishmanhuman being; man
- SOUND CHANGE
- Modern man continues Middle English man with stabilized spelling and pronunciation.
- SEMANTIC CHANGE
- A broad human-being word develops an increasingly salient adult-male sense.
- SCHOLAR
- Merriam-Webster Editors · American Heritage Dictionary Editors
- CONFIDENCE
- established
- CHRONOLOGY
- Recorded before the twelfth century in English.
2 CITATIONSMan — Definition, Word History, and First Known UseEtymology and First Known Use Man — American Heritage Dictionary and Word HistoryWord History and definitions AUDIT CANONICAL EDGE 808 ↗
Publishes the Old and Middle English history and pre-twelfth-century horizon.
ORIGINAL ↗Documents the broad older human sense and later male salience.
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.