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 556MāoriMāori record–today
tapu
A Māori word for what is sacred, prohibited, restricted, set apart, or under atua protection, inherited within the wider Oceanic *tampu family.
“Māori tapu is not an English loan and English taboo was not borrowed from Māori. They are historical cousins: English came from Tongan, while Māori independently preserves the older Oceanic family.”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
Māoritapu
sacred, prohibited, restricted, set apart, or under atua protection
↑GO DEEPER
Proto-Oceanic · Proto-Oceanic reconstruction*tampusacred, forbidden; under ritual restriction
*
RECONSTRUCTED, NOT DIRECTLY ATTESTED
- SOUND CHANGE
- Māori tapu preserves the t and vowels of the wider Oceanic comparison; intermediate subgroup stages are not invented.
- SEMANTIC CHANGE
- Sacredness, prohibition, restriction, and being set apart remain central.
- SCHOLAR
- POLLEX editors · John C. Moorfield
- CONFIDENCE
- probable — The Māori word is attested; *tampu is a comparative reconstruction.
2 CITATIONSTAPU [OC] — Prohibited, under ritual restriction, tabooNew Zealand Maori reflex under OC.TAPU; POC *tampu note Tapu — Te Aka Māori DictionaryTapu definitions 1–4 AUDIT CANONICAL EDGE 516 ↗
Directly compares Māori tapu with the Oceanic reconstruction.
ORIGINAL ↗Documents the attested Māori form and full semantic field.
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.