Q&A Forum - October 2015

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The female counterpart wif survives today as wife, but to the Anglo-Saxons the word meant any woman, not just a spouse. In addition, Old English also had wæpman, literally meaning a human with a weapon and used to refer to a male human (weapon was an Old English euphemism for the penis阴茎 — the male sex organ), and wifman. Wifman survives today as woman.

While Anglo-Saxons could use “man” to mean a male of the species, they commonly used it to mean a human being of either sex. Over time, however, use of wer faded in favor of man, and wif specialized to mean a married woman. This left us with the words “man” and “woman”. So man did not mean male originally but rather human being. You see this throughout history and in many other languages.

In Hebrew, the Biblical account of creation of the word that was translated into “man” also meant “species” thus “man” in the Genesis account of creation did not mean a male but rather a species. The entire record of Genesis was an evolution of a progression in the superiority of the creation (Plants – Insects – Birds – Sea creatures – Land Animals – Man - Woman).

The word “woman” is not a negative so that is why there is really no need for “womyn”. Interestingly the verb “womanize” originally meant "to make effeminate (or make a woman of)”. It is a term of feminizing a man but over time our language has changed the meaning into "to chase women, to go wenching". This occurred around 1893.