Re: man- (was: logic vocabulary)

On Thu, 23 Dec 2004 11:56:14 -0500, Sally Caves <scaves@...> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       Constructed Languages List <CONLANG@...>
> Poster:       Sally Caves <scaves@...>
> Subject:      Re: man- (was: logic vocabulary)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "John Cowan" <jcowan@...>
>
> > Andreas Johansson scripsit:
> >
> >> Eurocentric? What European languages, beyond English, are there that
> >> derive
> >> "woman" from "man"?
> >
> > Indeed, I think even English can be acquitted of that charge, at least
> > diachronically: when the compound _wi:f-man_ > _woman_ was formed, _man_
> > meant primarily 'person, homo, Mensch' (and only secondarily 'man, vir,
> > Mann'), and _wi:f_ meant 'woman'.
>
> Well exactly.  The word for masculine human in Old English, as you know, was
> _wer_, cognate with L. vir.  Hence you have werhade and wifhade meaning
> "male" and "female."  Eugenia, in Aelfric's Saint's Lives, who cross-dressed
> in order to become a monk, was discovered at her death to be a wifhades man,
> "a female person."  She was venerated anyway and granted sainthood.
>
> To answer Andreas' query, I think what Remi meant to call to mind was the
> long tradition in western thinking that woman is a deformation of a man; an
> incomplete man,
I've always heard from certainf eminists who don't look up their
sources that they claim that woman is a womb-man, indicating that men
saw them as only objects of procreation and nothing more.

And when i've explained the origins they simply ignore me :).

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