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 219Present-Day English1566–today
shah
The Persian title for a king or sovereign, borrowed into English in the sixteenth century.
“The royal title shah is the living word inside the deep histories of check and chess: bureaucracy, verification, and a global board game all point back toward “king.””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
- SOUND CHANGE
- Persian šāh is borrowed into English as shah with its pronunciation approximated and transliteration simplified.
- SEMANTIC CHANGE
- The sovereign title remains a sovereign title.
- SCHOLAR
- Merriam-Webster Editors
- CONFIDENCE
- established
- CHRONOLOGY
- First-known English use is reported in 1566.
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.