Wellattested

Well-attested is an adjective used to describe information, data, or claims that are supported by multiple independent sources, observations, or records and thus considered reliable or well substantiated. In research contexts, well-attestation increases confidence in the claims and reduces the influence of anecdotal or single-source evidence.

In linguistics, well-attested typically refers to linguistic forms, sound correspondences, grammatical constructions, or lexical items that have extensive documentation across languages, dialects, or corpora. Evidence may come from grammars, dictionaries, field notes, texts, or large language corpora; cross-language or cross-dialect replication strengthens the attestation.

Establishing well-attestation requires corroboration from multiple independent sources and, when possible, diachronic depth. The more independent attestations, the stronger the support for a given form, rule, or analysis; well-attested data are preferred in typology and historical reconstruction.

Limitations include potential sampling bias, genre effects, or time-bound data that may not extend to other varieties or periods. Even well-attested items can be misinterpreted or revised with new evidence, so attestation is a matter of degree rather than an absolute judgment.

See also: Attestation, Corpus linguistics, Documentation, Data quality.