As soon as we handle the foundation of ship and motorboat (the names of things with respect to culture that is material, issues are very nearly predictable. Such terms might have been lent from a language that is unknownor from an attested language, but definitive evidence of the text is wanting) or created in ways our company is struggling to reconstruct, but spouse? Yet its etymology isn’t any less obscure. My proposition will enhance the stock that is existing of, as well as the future will show whether it has any potential for success, let alone acceptance.
The few items that is stated about spouse without hedging are as follows. In past times, it was pronounced wif, because of the vowel as with contemporary Engl. wee. It implied “woman,” not “female spouse,” because it nevertheless does in housewife, midwife, old wives’ tale, German Weib, and Dutch wijf. Extremely early, man(letter) “person” ended up being included with it, and also by a group of phonetic modifications wifman became woman. Old Engl. wif had cognates in German, Dutch, and Frisian. Old Icelandic wif (i designates “long i,” the vowel that is same within the Old English term) happened in poetry, but whether or not it had been indigenous in Scandinavian or borrowed from English (an even more likely choice) is not clear. Whatever the case, wif had not been a typical Germanic term, since it failed to arrive in Gothic, a Germanic language, recorded in the 4th century CE. Neither is it an extension regarding the primary Indo-European term for “woman,” which we detect in gynecology and whose Germanic cognate could be the now obsolete Engl. quean (quean is linked to queen, however they are various terms).
Wife, present in a big but area that is limited appears to have been a term endowed by having a specific feeling; otherwise, a cognate of Gothic qino “woman” (compare gyne-, above) could have satisfied the speakers. Similarly problematic may be the beginning of bride, this time around a typical Germanic term. In working with girl, spouse, and bride, we can not stay static in the sphere of “pure etymology,” for we must investigate the household relations of previous epochs plus the meaning that is exact of terms. One term would designate a woman that is married another a nubile woman, a third a bride, and so on. In these instances roots that are manipulating suffixes is insufficient, since the tries to give an explanation for derivation of spouse show with depressing quality. Hypotheses regarding the beginning of spouse are wide ranging, while the primary obstacle confronting etymologists lies in the sphere of grammar, instead of semantics. Old Engl. wif (like modern Weib that is german neuter. Just exactly just How could a noun meaning “woman” be neuter? No conjecture from the beginning of wife is well worth any such thing unless it could account fully for its grammatical sex.
This will be a photo of the Weaver that is female maybe perhaps not the ancestor of anybody’s spouse or any girl.
But first let me reveal a brief summary of the most well known theories. One guide after another derives wife through the verb weave. Some individuals nevertheless help this derivation. But, it really is indefensible from the point that is phonetic of, with no you have had the oppertunity to spell out why the phrase for “weaver” should have been neuter. Sources towards the expected low status of old weavers are nonsense. Then there’s Gothic (bi)waibjan “surround, encompass; clothe, wrap” (bi- is a prefix). Its cognates frequently suggest “swing, sway, vacillate,” as observed in Engl. waver. Biwaibjan and its particular congeners offered increase to some other etymology that is well-known of. Presumably, the link that is sought-for wife and clothe ended up being the veil. “Wife,” according for this reconstruction, suggested “a veiled bride,” since the veiling regarding the bride ended up being customary among all Western Indo-Europeans. But, aside from numerous semantic problems, that I will skip, it continues to be a puzzle the way the line between “bride” and “woman” ended up being crossed (no culture, and therefore no language, confuses these principles) and exactly why a feminine person about to marry, even when veiled, acquired the neuter sex in Germanic. Other recommendations across the same lines had been you can forget persuasive. Instead of “veil,” various items of a woman’s clothing were known as, however the fundamental concept stayed: “from clothes to person”, like in he chases every dress. But, there was scarcely a solitary solid exemplory case of a term like dress, apron, or bonnet turning by metonymy into a name that is everyday “girl” or “woman.”
Because could possibly be expected, some individuals hoped to get the etymon of spouse in short for the woman’s genitals. A neuter noun keeping down some vow resulted in just in Tocharian, that is perhaps not best for this etymology, because spouse, as noted, had restricted currency even yet in Germanic. In Tocharian B it sounded kwipe and implied “shame place,” with regards to “penis,” whereas Tocharian A kip designed “mother’s pity body,” so either “vulva” or “womb.” Secure Tocharian cognates of also typical Germanic terms are very few, and, in the event that Tocharian noun had been linked to the protoform of wife, it is nearly unimaginable that this term wouldn’t normally have resulted in somewhere within Asia Minor and Medieval Germania. Also, as well as be viewed, neither kwipe nor kip designed directly “woman’s genitals.” Nonetheless, this etymology, as with any the prior people, discovered a couple of distinguished supporters.
We will go by other, also less convincing, conjectures and started to my personal proposition. Discrepancies amongst the grammatical sex regarding the term therefore the intercourse for the person it designates are not unusual, and lots of other examples of neuter nouns for “woman” occur. All of them requires an explanation that is detailed. right right Here only 1 reality should always be mentioned. In every the old Indo-European languages the type of the feminine single coincided with that regarding the neuter plural. This scenario poses intriguing and complicated questions regarding the foundation associated with the grammatical sex and relations between an organization (which is why the neuter plural is natural) plus a specific girl. The path for a collective plural to a singular, either feminine or masculine, has been attested more than once in any case. an anthologized instance is god. Old Germanic had just the neuter plural (gods). The noun that is masculine after Germanic-speakers had been converted to Christianity.
Among the list of Old Scandinavian goddesses, we find Sif.
Her title, derived from Indo-European si-bh, relates to Engl. sib and Latin su-us “one’s own.” Sif should have been the patroness of household ties. The only recorded myth in which she plays an women mail order catalog obvious part, points to fertility, in the place of affinity by wedding, nevertheless the principles of household and fertility are near. I compared Sib together with individual pronoun we. The protoform of we was wis (with “long i, that is, wees, if spelled in today’s English); -s ended up being an ending. I believe that Old Germanic wibh, the protoform of spouse, had been wi-bh a formation parallel to sibh. If i will be right, sibh meant “all the individuals associated by marriage,” while wibh known an organization tracing its beginning to your woman that is same. It absolutely was an expressed term like y’all. Wibh, when I notice it, needed to be neuter, since it ended up being the name of a residential district whose users descended or thought that that they had descended through the same girl. It included both men and women, as well as in Germanic, when a pronoun like they covered “mixed company,” the proper execution was always neuter (John and Jack needed the masculine they, Betty and Mary could be included in the womanly they, whereas Jack and Jill required the neuter they). As time proceeded, the term meaning “we, descendants of 1 woman” arrived to suggest “woman.” Wife emerged as a term of social relations, nevertheless the old gender that is grammatical. The old Indo-European term for “woman” (preserved by Engl. quean) also survived, however it narrowed its sphere of application and arrived to denote “woman in her own biological (son or daughter bearing) function.”
Those individuals who have difficulty thinking that the exact same term can reference a team also to a person should remember Engl. youth “young individuals” and youth “a young man” or individuals and an individuals, aside from one sheep
numerous sheep, regardless of the factors behind this use may be. Evidently, the difference from a woman’s part once the creator of the clan and her role of a possible mom wasn’t universal, because also in Germanic it had been restricted to an area that is certain. Nor have we retained it: girl acts both purposes equally well, and quean, to your level that it’s nevertheless utilized outside some rural dialects, means “slut.” Someone may say that Germanic wib has not been attested with its collective meaning. Quite therefore. If this feeling had proceeded in to the epoch that is literary lingered in a few archaic dialect, my etymology might have been available in the eighteenth century during the latest.