What is the origin of the word "Woman"?

The word "woman" comes from the old & middle English term "wif man" - meaning a female human being, with "wif" meaning female and "man" meaning person. Over time, this word shorted to "woman". In order to specify that someone was male, you would have used the prefix "were" (male) giving "were man". The words "wif" and "were" both survive today - "wif" became wife, and "were" survives only in words like "werewolf".

Due to there being no standard dictionary, the spellings varied - were/wer, wiff/wif, man/mann.

More Info: en.wikipedia.org

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13 Comments

Maia

Origin of words are fascinating.

Dennis Lane

Maia , Friends call me Word Nerd, but I did not know this. Word origins are fascinating to me, also.

Beverley

I read somewhere that woman is one of the few words which originated in English and not borrowed from other languages such as Latin and French

george young

lady draggon, The word "woman" comes from the Old English compound word wyf man, which is a combination of wyf and mann (not man). 🙄

Jas Newman

barbarac, If you check, you might find the original language of the Bible was not English.

Kath Thomson

JD Sebring, In the original Hebrew text of Genesis, the word for "woman" is אִשָּׁה ('ishah) and was given by Adam, not God. This term appears in the creation narrative of Genesis 2:23, where Adam names the first woman. The passage reads: "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called 'ishah, for she was taken out of 'ish (man)." The English word, woman, comes as per the info, from Old English, which was before Christianity came to England.

Helga U. Williams

Well, it would have to have come from the English, since "woman" is a different name in every language. Frau, femme.....etc etc

JD Sebring

I don't believe you've looked far enough back in language since the word woman was given by God when he made a woman from a part of a man, so that explanation supposedly from Malta seemed most correct for me 💁