WITNESS / 106
ALL WITNESSES ↗PERMANENT ATTESTATION RECORDWITNESS / 106
OBJECT
BEFORE
CLAIM.
THE PRIMARY OBJECT WAS NOT CHECKED.
Source-reported horizon for the literal ball-of-thread sense; no underlying Old or Middle English object was directly inspected.
Present-Day Englishbefore the 12th centuryestablished
clew
Merriam-Webster lexicographic first-use record for clew
- WITNESS TYPE
- Lexicographic first-use report
- YEAR
- Not fixed
- LOCATOR
- First Known Use, noun sense 1
- REPOSITORY
- Not recorded
- SHELFMARK / OBJECT ID
- Not recorded
- FACSIMILE
- Not linked
- DIRECT INSPECTION
- No
- CONFIDENCE
- established
WORD DOSSIERclew ↗
CANONICAL FORM NODENODE 393 ↗
01
BIBLIOGRAPHIC PROVENANCE
THE SOURCE BEHIND THE CLAIM
- TITLE
- Clew — Definition, Word History, and First Known Use
- AUTHOR
- Merriam-Webster Editors
- YEAR
- 2026
- PUBLISHER
- Merriam-Webster
- SOURCE TYPE
- historical dictionary
- CITATION KEY
- mw-clew