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hashar | 3 months ago

« mann » comes from Old English and stands for a human being.

« wïfmann », literally "female human", led to « wife ».

« were » means man and comes from Germanic and I don't think « weremann » has ever been a thing.

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binary132|3 months ago

Blew my mind when I found out “world” is a direct derivative of the word “were”.

AdhemarVandamme|3 months ago

world” is derived from “were” + “eald” (old), and meant “the age of humans”, which was distinguished from the age of the Gods, when the Æsir and Vanir dominated, and the age of the Jötnar.

I find it interesting how the term shifted from a (mythical) temporal concept to a spatial concept, to now often a social concept (e.g. the Fourth World).