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 831Present-Day English13th century–today
person
An individual human being, historically from Latin persōna, whose older semantic field includes theatrical mask, character, and role.
“Person reaches a mask and role in Latin. The tempting per-sonare sound-through story is not secure, and the proposed trail through Etruscan phersu toward Greek prosōpon remains genuinely disputed.”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 Englishperson
individual human being
↑GO DEEPER
Middle English · Middle Englishpersoneperson; character
- SOUND CHANGE
- Modern person continues Middle English persone with loss of final unstressed e and stabilized spelling.
- SEMANTIC CHANGE
- Role and individual reference develop into the modern person noun.
- SCHOLAR
- Merriam-Webster Editors · American Heritage Dictionary Editors
- CONFIDENCE
- established
- CHRONOLOGY
- Recorded in the thirteenth century.
2 CITATIONSPerson — Definition, Word History, and First Known UseEtymology and First Known Use Person — American Heritage DictionaryHeadword etymology AUDIT CANONICAL EDGE 833 ↗
Publishes Middle English persone and the thirteenth-century horizon.
ORIGINAL ↗Independently supplies the medieval and Latin history.
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.