I am turning over the etymology of the word
woman in my mind right now. It seems rather interesting...
The etymology dictionary gives the following info:
woman - O.E. wimman (pl. wimmen), alteration of wifman (pl. wifmen), a compound of wif "woman" (see wife) + man "human being."
I learnt the same at my History of English class as well. And I have also believed that it is so....what can we do with the history...
But now...I've got some doubts...
I bumped into the word
womb in the book I read... Can you see the total similarity?
woman -
[WUM8n]
womb -
[WUM]
Isn't that tricky???
To my mind, etymology should be as follows:
womb + man = woman (a human with a womb)
Funny, isnt' it?