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The term man (from Proto-Germanic *mann-"person") and words derived from it can designate any or even all of the human race regardless of their sex or age. In traditional usage, man (without an article) itself refers to the species or to humanity (mankind) as a whole. The Germanic word developed into Old English mann. In Old English, the word ...
This is a list of English words inherited and derived directly from the Old English stage of the language. This list also includes neologisms formed from Old English roots and/or particles in later forms of English, and words borrowed into other languages (e.g. French, Anglo-French, etc.) then borrowed back into English (e.g. bateau, chiffon, gourmet, nordic, etc.).
The Old English form primarily meant "person" or "human being" and referred to men, women, and children alike. The Old English word for "man" as distinct from " wif "/" woman " or "child" was wer . Mann only came to mean "man" in Middle English, replacing wer , which survives today only in the compounds " werewolf " (from Old English werwulf ...
Old English had multiple generic nouns for "woman" stretching across all three genders: for example, in addition to the neuter wif and the masculine wifmann listed above, there was also the feminine frowe. [2]: 6 For the gender-neutral nouns for "child", there was the neuter bearn and the neuter cild (compare English child).
The spelling of woman in English has progressed over the past millennium from wīfmann [9] to wīmmann to wumman, and finally, the modern spelling woman. [10] In Old English, mann had the gender-neutral meaning of ' human ', akin to the Modern ' person ' or ' someone '. The word for ' woman ' was wīf or wīfmann (lit.
Were and wer are archaic terms for adult male humans and were often used for alliteration with wife as "were and wife" in Germanic-speaking cultures [1] (Old English: wer, Old Dutch: wer, Gothic: waír, Old Frisian: wer, Old Saxon: wer, Old High German: wer, Old Norse: verr). In Anglo-Saxon law wer was the value of a man's life.
A kenning (Old English kenning [cʰɛnːiŋɡ], Modern Icelandic [cʰɛnːiŋk]) is a circumlocution, an ambiguous or roundabout figure of speech, used instead of an ordinary noun in Old Norse, Old English, and later Icelandic poetry. This list is not intended to be comprehensive. Kennings for a particular character are listed in that character ...
In Norse mythology, Ask and Embla (Old Norse: Askr ok Embla)—man and woman respectively—were the first two humans, created by the gods. The pair are attested in both the Poetic Edda , compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources, and the Prose Edda , composed in the 13th century.