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START / NODE 797Present-Day Englishbefore the 12th century–today
woman
An adult female human being; historically a compound of Old English wīf, woman, and mann, human being or person.
“Woman is not womb plus man. It is the worn-down descendant of wīfmann: literally a female person in the older English sense of man.”OPEN COMPLETE WORD DOSSIER ↗
EVERY REVIEWED PARENT, NOT ONE EDITORIAL PATH
FOLLOW EVERY BRANCH.
Compound components and competing routes stay separate. Every arrow retains its sound change, semantic change, scholar, confidence, and exact sources.
01
PARENT ROUTES1 REVIEWED RELATIONSHIP
Present-Day Englishwoman
adult female human being
↑GO DEEPER
Middle English · Middle Englishwommanwoman
- SOUND CHANGE
- Middle English womman develops to modern woman with reduction of the unstressed final syllable and modern spelling.
- SEMANTIC CHANGE
- The female-person compound remains the ordinary adult-female noun.
- SCHOLAR
- Merriam-Webster Editors · American Heritage Dictionary Editors
- CONFIDENCE
- established
- CHRONOLOGY
- Recorded before the twelfth century in English.
2 CITATIONSWoman — Definition, Word History, and First Known UseEtymology and First Known Use Woman — American Heritage DictionaryHeadword and etymology AUDIT CANONICAL EDGE 804 ↗
Publishes Middle English womman, Old English wīfman, and the pre-twelfth-century horizon.
ORIGINAL ↗Independently publishes the wimman and wīfman history.
ORIGINAL ↗THE ASTERISK IS A PROMISE
RECONSTRUCTION IS
NOT INSCRIPTION.
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