Q&A Forum - March 2019

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Lets have some fun and examine feminine words and their origins, along with their present meanings. As we will see, words change over time and cultures use them differently. However, the origin is important because of the spiritual aspects of the word. The person or persons who created the word assigned a meaning and even if that meaning has been changed over time, the creative force of the word can still touch the spirit based on the original creative thought that went into the word.

We know that there are two genders, male and female. The two basic words in the English language are “man” and “woman”. Naturally, we would expect these to have Old English roots and this is indeed the case. All the Germanic languages use the word “man” (in some form or another) to mean both a human being and a male person. English is no exception, although in Old English there was a distinction in common usage.

The Old English words wer and wif meant male and female humans respectively. Wer has its roots in the Indo-European wiros, which also gives us, via the Latin, virility and virtue. Wer is gone from the language, except in the word werewolf, which literally means man-wolf. In contrast, Anglo Saxons would use man as a synonym for wer and to mean humans in general.