Quote Originally Posted by Norder View Post
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it's all about the "earlier" - Kritti.


.a mix of etymology tells us....


The Germanic word developed into Old English mann. In Old English, the word still primarily meant "person" or "human," and was used for men, women, and children alike.....as “human” and “mankind” referring to both male and female.

An interesting convention that was thought up in the early 1900s to deal with this issue of “man” coming to mean both male and female and also sometimes meaning males exclusively is, in literature, to do the following: when referring to humans, “man” should be capitalized as in “Man”; when referring to “man” as in “male”, it is to be left lower case. This convention was used in such literary works as “The Lord of the Rings” and was a key point in the prophecy concerning the Witch-king of Angmar: “no man can kill me”, meaning that according to the prophecy a woman, Eowyn, could because “man” in the prophecy was not capitalized.

The word “wer” or “wǣpmann” was commonly used to refer to “male human”. This word almost completely died out around the 1300s, but survives somewhat in words like “werewolf”, which literally means “man wolf”

Women at the time were referred to as “wif” or “wīfmann“, meaning “female human”. The latter “wifmann”, eventually evolved into the word “woman”



lets see what the wef says....





Thanks, Norder. Etymology has long been one of my interests.

It interests me too why, linguistically, female nouns often defer to male nouns. Once we had actress. Now all are generally referred to as actor. Similarly, authoresses are now authors. Yet so many rail against male dominance in society.

Why are male actors not referred to as actresses?

Any thoughts?