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Why are reconstructed Proto-Germanic words marked with an asterisk?

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Thematic map of Europe displaying the distribution of Germanic languages, with different colors indicating regions where English, German, Netherlandic (Dutch), Frisian, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese are spoken. Striped areas mark regions where bilingualism is common, and language regions cover countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, and parts of surrounding countries. — West Germanic languages Distribution of the Germanic languages in Europe.

In linguistics, reconstructed words—such as those in Proto-Germanic—are marked with an asterisk to indicate that they are not attested in any surviving written records.1

Because no written evidence of the parent language exists, scholars use the comparative method to deduce its structure by comparing cognate forms across descendant languages. The asterisk serves as a standard convention to denote that these forms are hypothetical reconstructions rather than documented historical words.12

While some linguists view these starred forms primarily as formulas that summarize phonological correspondences between attested languages, others interpret them as attempts to reconstruct the actual phonetic reality of the ancestral language. Occasionally, these deductions are supported by external evidence, such as early loanwords in other languages, which provide further confirmation for the reconstructed forms.21