The word 'man' has been in the English language since the beginnings of the language. It originally meant a human being, irrespective of sex, and in Old English there were two words for a male human being: were and wapman. Both these words became obsolete after the 13th century. The only vestige of the former in modern English is the word werewolf. Were here is a cognate of Latin vir meaning man (cf virile) and of the earlier Sanskrit vira, also meaning man.
Many people still insist that man means 'a person of either sex', although they would be horrified if I or other women went through the public toilet door marked 'Men'. If I had started the last sentence "many men still insist that ..." few, if any, readers would have understood this to refer to both men and women.
The OED now specifically states (and I quote): "The genderless uses of man to mean ‘human being’ or ‘person’ are now often objected to on the grounds that they depreciate women, and are frequently replaced by human, human being, or person."
Were may have disappeared in modern English, but the opposite of were in Old English hasn't. That was wif, which originally meant any woman, regardless of marital status. This meaning is still retained in words and phrases such as fishwife and old wives' tales. The modern word 'woman' was originally wifman, which was literally 'woman human being'. W is pronounced with rounded lips, but i is pronounced with the mouth and lips spread wide, so by the end of the 12th century the initial rounding of the lips influenced the pronunciation of the following vowel, causing it to change from an i to u, the spelling later changing to the o we have today.
I remember an expression of a Nigerian workmate when speaking of humankind in general, "woman-born".
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Posted by: Virtual Linguist | January 04, 2011 at 11:06 PM
"Wife" is still a common term in Scotland for "woman".
"The MHM Song" starts off:
"Ye'll 'uv heard o' the de'il as he wandered thro' Beith,
Wi' a wife in each oxter and wan in his teeth".
Although it's possible that the devil is a polygamist, I don't think that's what is intended: simply that he had a woman in each armpit and one between his teeth.
Posted by: malkie | January 08, 2011 at 12:58 AM
Thanks Malkie. That's something I've learnt today. Had never heard of MHM before you mentioned it!
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