woman

Pronunciation

• IPA: /ˈwʊm.ən/, plural /ˈwɪm.ɪn/^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English womman (earlier wumman), inherited from Old English wimman (plural wimmen),^[2][3] an alteration, by assimilation of f to m, of wīfman,^[3][2][4] a compound, from Old English wīf (“woman”) + man (“human being”).^[3][2][5] The formation is peculiar to English,^[3][6][4] though Etymonline compares Dutch vrouwmens (“wife”), literally “woman-man”.^[2][7] It is related to wife and man.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

A woman; also a female servant: Old English wīfman, before 766.^[3][2]

Semantic evolution

The older word for a woman was wīf, which narrowed to wife;^[3][8] wīfman replaced it and quean as the general word for a female person.^[2] The f was assimilated to m in late Old English, and wim- was rounded to wum- and wom- in the 13th century,^[4][2] under the influence of the w.^[2] From about 1400 woman and women were the regular spellings, but in standard speech the singular took the vowel of wood and the plural kept the vowel of wit, perhaps on the model of pairs like foot and feet.^[3][2] Womankind is from before 1325,^[3] and womanhood and womanish from about 1385, in Chaucer;^[3] Gower first used womanish in its scornful sense in 1393.^[3] Womanize meant “to make effeminate” in the 16th century and “to chase women” from the 19th.^[4] A woman's work is never done goes back to 1570, and a woman's place is in the home to the early 19th century.^[8] Some feminists of the 1970s and 1980s used womyn or wimmin to avoid the men of the plural.^[8]

Timeline

• before 766 – Old English wīfman.^[3]
• c. 1000 – late Old English wimman.^[3]
• c. 1250 – the form woman.^[3]
• before 1325 – womankind.^[3]
• c. 1385 – womanhood (Chaucer).^[3]
• c. 1400 – woman and women become the usual spellings.^[3]
• 1570 – a woman's work is never done.^[8]
• 1970s – womyn, wimmin.^[8]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. An adult female human being.
2. Women as a group; womankind.
3. A woman of a particular group or occupation: a businesswoman.
4. Feminine quality; womanliness.
5. (dated) A female servant.
6. (informal) A wife, lover or girlfriend.

Word family

• womanless

Related words

• wife
• man
• womanhood
• womankind
• women

References

1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c d Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000), 4th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
6. ^ a b Soanes, Catherine; Stevenson, Angus, eds. (2004), Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
8. ^ a b c d e Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press