Woman — From Old English to English | etymologist.ai
woman
/ˈwʊm.ən/·noun·before 900 CE·Established
Origin
OldEnglish 'wifmann' (female-person) — worn downthrough 'wimman' to 'woman,' since 'mann' meant any human.
Definition
An adult female human being.
The Full Story
Old Englishbefore 900 CEwell-attested
From OldEnglish 'wīfmann' (female person), a compound of 'wīf' (woman, female, wife) + 'mann' (person, human being, one). Old English 'mann' wasthegeneric word for a human being of either sex — it is cognate with Sanskrit 'manu' (human being) and Gothic 'manna' (person). The compound 'wīfmann' therefore meant 'female-person,' not 'female-man.' Over the Middle English period the compound contracted
The plural 'women' is pronounced /ˈwɪm.ɪn/, not /ˈwʊm.ɛn/ — the firstvowelchangesbut not the second. This is because the OldEnglish plural 'wīfmenn' had i-mutation in the 'mann/menn' element (the same process as man/men), and the 'wīf' element was also affected, producing the modern vowel difference between 'woman' and 'women.'
. The first element 'wīf' survives as 'wife,' with its meaning also narrowed from 'woman' in general to 'married woman' specifically. Old English had 'wer' (adult male human, cf. Latin 'vir') as the counterpart to 'wīf' — 'wer' survives only in 'werewolf' (man-wolf). Key roots: wīf (Old English: "woman, female (uncertain further origin)"), mann (Old English: "person, human being (gender-neutral)").