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Along these lines, the words "male" and "female" came to English from Latin along totally different paths, even though they seem like they'd have been created t
by russellbeattie 5y ago
Along these lines, the words "male" and "female" came to English from Latin along totally different paths, even though they seem like they'd have been created together.
- StavrosK 5y agoWhaaat? That's crazy, thanks for that!
- stevula 5y agoSkipping through several stages of English and French, the derivation is: male < Latin masculus < mas “male (animal)” female < Latina femella < femina “woman” masculus and femella are diminutives of mas and femina respectively.
- russellbeattie 5y agoI think the key bit is that "fe-" is not some sort of prefix, but part of a totally different word that had its spelling changed for consistency. This is unlike the "wo-" in woman, which in fact a prefix originally meaning "wife". Weirdly, English got "man" from Old German (meaning a person), but "human" from the Latin "homo", so just like female, the "hu-" in human isn't a prefix either, but derived from a totally different word. Then again, "man" extends back to proto-Indo- European, so maybe it's all related regardless.