Great stuff!
Quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
It's interesting that the difference between MAN and woMAN (both containing the historically used name of the species) is a wo. Anyone know what the wo came from or means? Nothing to do with womb is it?
WOMBMAN?????
Same with MALE and feMALE.
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To answer this question
In Old (or Olde
) English
mann or
monn was used for a human being.
Wif for a female and
waep or
carl for a male. In combined forms,
mann dropped the second n to form
wifwan and
waepman/carlman. The combined word
wifman evolved into woman, while
wif narrowed in meaning (from female) to wife. With the transfromation of
wif to the narrower meaning, the
waep- and
carl- were dropped and
man became a term for a male. This lead to the confusion between
mann and
man and eventually lead to
man being used to for a human being and a male human being.
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