Originally posted: 9/9/2022
Don’t ever trust interesting etymologies 😂
Transcription:
In a recent not deleted tweet, a British politician said that the word woman comes from, “Womb man.“ In concept, etymologically, that’s not dumb. Lots of words come about like that. We got boards we keep our cups on, so it’s a cup board. Cupboard.
But, “Womb man,“ leading to, “Woman?“ It’s just not true. It comes from, “Wif man.“ Which a lot of people take to mean, “The wife of a man,“ making it only slightly less degrading than defining women by their wombs. But that’s not true, either. Because in Old E
...nglish, as the word, “Woman,“ was evolving, the word, “Wif,“ and the word, “Man,“ did not mean what we mean by wife and man today.
1200 years ago, “Wif,“ simply meant a female person. So in an Anglo Saxon translation of the Bible, when Jesus talks to his mother, he calls her, “Show more