Re: USAGE: would've verses would of

On Thu, 25 Oct 2001 18:52:59 -0400 John Cowan <cowan@...>
writes:
> That said, historic forms don't necessarily *control* the standard,
> otherwise we'd say *bridegoom instead of bridegroom (< OE
> bryd-guma, 'bride-man').
> --
> John Cowan           http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
-

Old English certainly had a lot of ways to say "man"... besides whatever
the old form of the word "man" itself was, there's this "guma" and then
there's the "were" in "werewolf"... does anyone know if there were
semantic differences between these different words?  were some of them
gender-neutral while others male?


-Stephen (Steg)
 "eh?"

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