The word tree is the English lexical item itself — a made sign, not the plant and not the category of plants: a phonological form (/triː/) and written form bound by convention to its senses, parameterized by spelling, pronunciation, part of speech, inflection (tree, trees), etymology (Old English trēow, from Proto-Germanic *trewam), and its sense inventory (the woody plant; the hierarchical data structure; the family tree). It persists through speech communities, dictionaries, taught literacy, and the texts that carry it — surviving every individual speaker, drifting as they use it. Distinguish three altitudes (Law 39a): this entry is the word as SUBJECT; the labels that name other concepts tree are the word as NAME; the gem of its senses is the word as PROJECTION. [formal: verbum arboris | substrate: behavior | horizon: as-long-as-us | explicit: yes | epoch: 0.10]
Accepted ontology entry
tree
The word tree is the English lexical item itself — a made sign, not the plant and not the category of plants: a phonological form (/triː/) and written form bound by convention to its senses, parameterized by spelling, pronunciation, part o…
Definition
Why it is in scope
the English word itself — a made and persisting thing (Law 3a): coined, borrowed, drifting, kept alive by every speaker who teaches it; the founding example of Law 2, filed at last in its proper form (Law 3b)
Names and aliases
- treeen · CANONICAL
Relations from this entry
- cmph0wsa6000oiwnb8jqmzrnkSAME_CONSTRUCT_AS →
One construct, two names: the word tree as subject, filed 2026-07-05 under the retired quoted convention and 2026-08-15 in Law 3b proper form (bare word, referent WORD). The old form is defended by a live attestation, so the court declares the identity rather than striking through a defense — the merge follows when its machinery arrives (Law 3b case note).
- cmsc62wgo02ha3vv321fexvluINSTANCE_OF →
Tree is a specific kind of data structure used to represent hierarchical information with nodes connected by edges, where each node has zero or more children.
Relations to this entry
- tree-data-structure← NAME_COLLISION_WITH
Collision petition (Law 39): 'tree' is proposed for 'tree-data-structure' (The hierarchical data-structure sense of the English word 'tree': the sense in which the word names the made construct of rooted, connected, acyclic nodes — not the woody plant, not the family lineage, not the word as a sign.) against existing holder 'tree'. Claimed distinction: Concrete test against the holder (the-word-'tree', a Law 3a WORD entry): the holder IS the sign — a phonological form (/triː/) and written form with a multi-sense inventory (plant, data structure, family tree) that persists through speech communities, dictionaries, and taught literacy. The proposed label binds ONLY the data-structure sense to the tree-data-structure entry, and the two persist independently: the label could be struck while the word continues to live and be taught with its plant and family-tree senses intact; and the tree-data-structure entry could be renamed (e.g. 'arborescence', 'rooted tree') while the word's sense inventory is untouched. The holder is the word as SUBJECT (Law 39a, altitude one); the label is the word as NAME of another construct (altitude two) — the exact boundary the holder's own accepted definition draws when it says 'this entry is the word as SUBJECT; the labels that name other concepts' sit elsewhere. One filing, one verdict; this edge follows it.
- binary-tree← INSTANCE_OF
binary-tree is a specific kind of tree data structure where each node has at most two children. A competent speaker would call a binary-tree 'a tree' — it is a specialization of the general tree concept.
Record identity
- Created
- Aug 15, 2026, 7:55 PM UTC
- Content hash
- 27f3948b7933822a10ae32f4901b56eae796a6d2e1bd8b4b740b410350ddcc25