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From: nadel@aero.org (M.H. Nadel)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: A question about "womyn"
Message-ID: <1991Mar13.191919.11100@aero.org>
Date: 13 Mar 91 19:19:19 GMT
References: <12039120:43:54WNR0@lehigh.bitnet>
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In article <12039120:43:54WNR0@lehigh.bitnet> WNR0@ns.cc.lehigh.edu (Whitney Noel Rearick) writes:
>The derivation of the word 'woman' is literally 'wife of man'.

Actually, this is incorrect.  The word "man" originally referred
to any human, i.e. was entirely gender-neutral.  "Wifman" referred to a
female human and "werman" to a male human.  The "wer" prefix now exists only
in the word "werewolf".  (Hence, a woman who grows hair and claws and howls
and roams the countryside eating people at the full moon is properly referred
to as a "wifwolf" but I am, so far as I know, the only person to use that term.)

Somewhere along the line, the "wer" prefix fell into disuse and the word
"man" became ambiguous.  The "wif" prefix mutated into "wo", and also 
retained a separate existence as the word "wife."  Note that "wife" did not
necessarily refer to a married woman until fairly recently (maybe the 19th
century).  In colonial America "goodwife" was essentially the equivalent of
"Ms." and became abbreviated to "goody."

While we're on this, the word "lady" is derived from "hleddige" meaning
a kneader of dough.  Of course, it came to mean precisely the sort of woman
who would never be seen baking her own bread as she'd have servants to do it.
And "girl" originally referred to a young child of either sex.  

The moral of which is that etymology doesn't tell you very much.


Miriam Nadel
-- 
"It is not the kind of play you would expect from a six-foot-five man who once
played a giraffe on Broadway."                    
                         - Kelli Pryor, reviewing Keith Curran's _Dalton's Back_
nadel@aerospace.aero.org