Happy Women’s History Month!
Chaka Khan said it best: “I’m every woman, it’s all in me!” But maybe Grammarphobia said it second best. As I mentioned Tuesday, “woman is not derived from (or a mere variation on) the term ‘man.’” Well let’s see where it’s from then, shall we?
“In Anglo-Saxon times, when words were bubbling away in the stewpot of Old English, there were several ways to refer to men and women. For a few hundred years, manna and other early versions of our modern word ‘man’ referred merely to a person regardless of sex—that is, a human being. So how did the Anglo-Saxons tell one sex from the other? A single or married man was a wer or a waepman (literally a ‘weapon-person’). A single or married woman was a wif or a wifman.
“By the year 900 or so, wifman began to lose its f. Over the next five hundred years, it went through many spellings until it settled down as our modern word ‘woman.’ Meanwhile, wif, which had its own share of spellings before becoming ‘wife’ in the 1400s, led a double life. It could mean a married woman, as it does today, but also a woman, married or single, in a humble trade—an archaic usage that survives in the quaint terms ‘fishwife’ and ‘alewife.’
“Speaking of quaint terms, whatever happened to the weapon-people? Around the year 1000, the various versions of manna began to mean an adult male as well as a human being. By the 1400s, manna had become our modern word ‘man,’ while the old macho terms wer and waepman had fallen out of use. [KC – Except when talking about werewolves!] That left the guys without a unique word for an adult male. They had to share ‘man’ with humanity in general.”
Well, there you have it! I wish all of you amazing women (and men) a happy March!
Kara Church
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