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Why do reconstructed Proto-Germanic words have 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. — Germanic languages Distribution of the Germanic languages in Europe.

In historical linguistics, reconstructed words—such as those in Proto-Germanic—are marked with an asterisk to indicate that they are hypothetical or unattested forms.12

Because no written records of the parent language exist, scholars use the comparative method to deduce its structure by analyzing related words across descendant languages. The asterisk serves as a standard convention to distinguish these reconstructed phonemes and words from those that have been historically documented. While some linguists view these starred forms primarily as formulas that summarize observed correspondences between languages, others interpret them as attempts to reconstruct the actual, pronounceable sounds of an ancestral language.13