Why is woman called woman?

Question

What does the (wo) signify? If you believe religion (which i dont) and man was created first. Then what does the (wo) signify?
Humor - After my morning ordeal with my partner over finance's i would say it represents WOE, (woman the woe of man.) Please that remark is in jest and is not a personal belief.
i was just wondering if anyone new what the (wo) represented?

Answer 1

The entries below from "Online Etymology Dictionary" explain a number of interesting things about these and related forms, and pronunciations of these surprisingly RELATED words: woman, wife, hussy, including:

- the early TWO-fold meaning of Old English "wif" (woman OR spouse, wife)
- "fishwife" and "midwife" which were NOT based on the modern meaning of "wife"
- the odd PRONUNCIATION of the plural form "women" (keeping the sound of the original 'wif' part of the root)
- the split of "huswif" into the nearly polar opposite "housewife" and "hussy"!

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=wife
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=hussy


By the way, for those who try to prove that "woman" somehow must mean "OF man", based on Genesis 2 -- that ignores the fact that "man" and "woman" here are TRANSLATIONS of the Hebrew ("ish" and "ishah"), so whatever is going on there, the Hebrew Bible wasn't written to tell us the origin of these ENGLISH words!

(Related to that -- Genesis has MANY examples of such "explanations" of the origins and meanings of Hebrew words, and especially of people's NAMES. But in a number of cases the expression is simply making a play on words that SOUND like each other, in order to make some point related to the story. It does NOT necessarily mean these were exactly the meaning of the names, or even that those who told the stories thought so. Indeed, in some cases, they are even telling a joke or mocking someone.)

Answer 2

All such questions can be answered by looking first at the American Heritage Dict, which gives pretty reliable etymologies for most English words. Woman is a curious case. In Old English, and even now of course, man often meant human being. And wife meant woman but was pronounced wif at the time! At some point, perhaps because wife started changing its meaning to the modern one (I am not sure of this part), a compound wif-man was created, meaning basically female human being. This compound, as is commonly the case in English, underwent massive changes that obscured the source form, and became woman.

I kid you not. Or, in other words, this is NOT an old wife's tale (:-). Sorry, could not resist.

Answer 3

Middle English, from Old English 'wìfman', from 'wìf' woman, wife + 'man' human being, man.
.

Answer 4

If you recall from the bible, in Gensis, God created woman from the womb of a man's ribs. That is how woman got it's name.

Answer 5

Woman means literally, 'of man'.

Answer 6

WO -To complain a lot to a

Woman - To complain alot to a man

Answer 7

Woman is derived from the Latin phrase, womanus bitchatus, which means "To complain a lot".