Re: What is a woman ?

Pavel Iosad scripsit:

>
> > Could somebody here please explain me the etymology of
> > the english word "woman"?
>
> OE wifman, i.e. wife-man.
True but misleading.  _Wif_ meant "woman" in OE, not "wife", and _man_ was
ambiguous between "adult male" and "human being" in OE as in ModE.
So it's a transparent compound meaning "female human being".

--
It was impossible to inveigle           John Cowan <jcowan@...>
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel           http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
Into offering the slightest apology     http://www.reutershealth.com
For his Phenomenology.                      --W. H. Auden, from "People" (1953)

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