Woman - Etymology

Etymology

In Old English, wīfmann meant "female human", whereas wēr meant "male human". Mann or monn had a gender-neutral meaning of "human", corresponding to Modern English "person" or "someone", however subsequent to the Norman Conquest, man began to be used more in reference to "male human", and by the late 1200s had begun to eclipse usage of the older term wēr. The medial labial consonants f and m in wīfmann coalesced into the modern form "woman", while the initial element, which meant "female," underwent semantic narrowing to the sense of a married woman ("wife").

A very common Indo-European root for woman, *gwen-, is the source of modern English "queen" (Old English cwēn had primarily meant woman, highborn or not; this is still the case in Danish, with the modern spelling kvinde, as well as in Swedish kvinna). The word gynaecology is also derived from the Ancient Greek cognate γυνή gynē, woman. Other English words traceable to the same Indo-European root include banshee "fairy woman" (from Irish bean "woman" and sí "fairy") and zenana (from Persian زن zan).

The Latin fēmina, whence female, is likely from the root in fellāre (to suck), in reference to breastfeeding.