The AFU and Urban Legend Archive
Language
Etymology
 woman etymology of




From: caskey_s@ix.wcc.govt.nz
Newsgroups: soc.women,alt.usage.english,alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Woman = wolf+man
Date: 23 Jan 1994 11:22:24 GMT

In article <1994Jan21.224835.6890@guvax>, keithk@guvax.acc.georgetown.edu writes: >Maybe your memory of it is slightly off. The most common etymology I
>have heard is that it comes from the Old/Middle English "wyf" + "man",
>having the rather obvious translation: wife-of-man. I can't figure
>what about "wolf-man" might be sexist, or even make any sense, but the
>above suggestion does make more sense and can certainly be seen as
>offensive, *defining* women, literally, as a thing which has a
>specified relation to a man (what feminists complain, reasonably, that
>popular culture and the law have done figuratively ever since).
>
>I can't afford an OED, so I will rely on someone with a bigger Dic than
>mine to verify all this.

Even a middle-sized Dic will tell you that "woman" is from:

Old English wifmann, wimman; from WIFE+MAN(human being) In other words, at the time the word has been traced back to, man(n) referred to a person of either sex.

A Dictionary Of Euphemisms And Other Doubletalk, by Hugh Rawson, has this (among other things) to say about the word "woman":

"Woman" itself has a curious history, which may be of some consolation to female readers, since it shows that they are not, linguistically at least, derivatives of the other sex. "Woman," superficial appearance to the contrary, does not come from "man," but from the Old English "wif-mann," where "wif" meant "female" and "mann" meant a human being of either sex. As late as 1752, the philosopher David Hume could use "man" in the original sense, when contending that "...there is in all men, both male and female, a desire and power of generation more active than is ever universally exerted." What happened as the language evolved, of course, was that males gradually arrogated the generic "mann" to themselves, while the old word for female, "wif," was diminished into wife, [...] Today, some men still insist that when they use "man" in such constructions as "The proper study of Mankind is Man," or "Man is a tool-making animal," they do not intend to imply that their sex is the superior, but they are fighting the tide of our time.

But then what can you do with a philosophy which believes changing the spelling of a word (womyn/womin/wimmin, they can't even agree on that) is a significant act? Or that Ms should be pronounced Mz (as in miserable) and not be an abbreviation for anything at all? (Why not just eliminate the use of Mrs and use Ms, pronounced Miss, as the logical counterpart to Mr?)

Anyway, all the capable, independent, intelligent, competent women I know (and that's almost all of them) have far better things to do with their lives than indulge in these inane academic parlour games.

>Kevin "wyflessman" T. Keith

Steve "wiffles, man" Caskey


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