4 ms·
As with many things that don't make much sense, it started from something more reasonable. Long, long ago the word 'man' unambiguously referred to all human be
by slavik81 6y ago
As with many things that don't make much sense, it started from something more reasonable. Long, long ago the word 'man' unambiguously referred to all human beings, while 'woman' was used for females and 'werman' was used for males.
The forgotten sexism is that we began using 'men' to refer specifically to males, almost like they were the only people that mattered. It happened so long ago that it's been mostly forgotten that there even was another name.
Though, you still see vestiges of it in the language. That's the same wer- as in werewolf.
- chalst 6y agoThis is a good point, excuse a quibble: 'werman' did not seem to actually see usage in Old English, although 'wepman', meaning male human, did in Middle English. I'm basing this on a discussion at Wiktionary: > Their point, that Old English mann was not specifically male, is correct; but their example of the specifically male word is apparently mistaken. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Talk:werman https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Talk:werman And 'wepman' is documented on the Middle English Compendium. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dictionary?utf8=%E2%9C%93&search_field=hnf&q=wepman https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dicti...
- slavik81 6y agoThanks for pointing that out. I think Wiktionary is where I first heard the word, and I hadn't seen it was removed. So, wer did mean male/husband and man did mean everyone. It's just that they weren't used together. I should probably also have noted that woman was 'wifman' back then. That one has more obvious descendants than the male version.