woman

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Woman is an old term for a woman who, in terms of linguistic history , experienced a gradual deterioration in meaning in some regions . The reason was the low social position and esteem for women, which is why numerous other women's designations (e.g. maid , prostitute , mamsell , fräulein , Frauenzimmer ) have experienced a deterioration in meaning.

The word "woman" currently has the following meanings:

In the meanings that still exist today, all aspects of the devaluation of the historical process of the deterioration of meaning are reflected: social degradation , functionalization, sexualization .

The word "woman" is used less and less historically and recently.

Example of worsening meaning of women's designations

See also a prime example of linguistics: the deterioration in the meaning of women's designations

The German word "Weib" is one of a large number of names for women in the German language , in which a negative change in quality can be observed during linguistic change . This also includes the words maid , prostitute , mummy , miss or woman .

Such a deterioration in the meaning of women's designations can historically be observed in many languages, as historical linguistics shows. In linguistics today this generally serves as a prime example of linguistic meaning deterioration (pejoration).

Studies in the history of language show that the deterioration in the meaning of women's designations "directly reflects the historically low status of women, their low social position and esteem". Like other semantic developments, these deteriorations in meaning are “a mirror of cultural-historical realities” and the depreciating realities, values ​​and attitudes of a society ( misogyny , sexism ) embedded in them .

In linguistics, three paths of negative quality change in women's designations have been identified. They are all reflected in the meanings of the word "woman" that still exist today:

  1. Use as a swear word (path: social degradation or downgrading)
  2. Use as an outdated, marriage-related function name (path: functionalization)
  3. Use in slang for an object of sexual desire (path: sexualization )

Linguistically, the word was partly seen as an indication of the euphemism treadmill hypothesis . Today this is considered refuted.

Concept history

middle Ages

In Old High German ( 750-1050 ) , wîb (cf. Old Norse. Víf , mhd. Wîp and English wife ) denoted an adult female person or wife.

The origin of the term in Gothic and Germanic is unclear - possible is the derivation of vífa or Germanic wîba (= 'envelop', originated from Indo-European ṷeip = 'to turn') and woman as 'the married woman wrapped in a headscarf'. The interpretation of words such as weiben (= moving back and forth, turning, swaying, floating) as 'the one who is busy moving' is also discussed .

Later the expression was restricted to the (married) woman of the lower classes, while frouwe ('woman') was mainly reserved for representatives of the nobility , later also rich patricians , and forms a counterpart to the gentleman .

Modern times

From Luther up to the 19th century the relationship can be found in the woman-man level, for example in Mozart's Magic Flute : “Man and woman and woman and man / reaching out to the deity”. Since the emergence of the courtly and polite term lady (from French , to domina ' landlady ') in the course of the 19th century, and the change from the aristocratic term woman to a general word, “woman” is often used pejoratively (“stupid woman "," Women stuff ").

Other aspects

The adjective "effeminate" stands for unmanly behavior .

The adjective “female” , together with the opposite term “male”, is used to denote the biological sex of living beings - analogous to the terms female and male - euphemizing in Mozart: “A girl or female / Papageno wishes himself” (Magic Flute).

The noun " femininity " serves as the opposite of " masculinity " to describe the social gender habitus of people.

In dialects such as Bavarian (Bavarian-Austrian dialects) or Walliser German and Swabian , the old meaning of the term is still present: Weiberleit ( leit , people) still parallel to Månerleit , Waibel as a nickname , or in the traditional " Weiberfastnacht ".

In Wanders German Proverbs Lexicon (5 volumes) there are almost 1500 proverbs about women (for example: He prefers to see a woman in a shirt than a man in armor ). If one counts the proverbs made up of words that are composed with women (women work, women rears, women eyes, etc.) or are derived from them (weibel, women), there are many other examples.

literature

  • Frevert, Ute (1995): “Man and Woman, and Woman and Man”. Gender differences in modern times. Munich.
  • Honegger, Claudia (1996): The order of the sexes. The Science of Man and Woman 1750–1850. Munich.
  • Florence Hervé , Elly Steinmann, Renate Wurm (eds.): The women lexicon. PapyRossa 1994, ISBN 3-89438-047-0
  • Wanders German Proverbs Lexicon (Volume 5) offers astonishing 1484 proverbs on the subject of women . This does not include word compositions with woman (see above).

See also

Wiktionary: Weib  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Damaris Nübling: From the 'maiden' to the 'maid', from the 'girl' to the 'prostitute': The pejoration of women's designations as a distorting mirror of culture and as an effect of male gallantry? In: Yearbook for German Language History . 2011, p. 344-362 .
  2. ↑ a b Duden Online: Woman. Retrieved September 6, 2017 .
  3. ↑ Woman. In: Bavarian dictionary. Retrieved January 5, 2018 .
  4. ↑ Konrad Kunze : New approaches to recording late medieval language variance. In: Kurt Ruh , Hans-Jürgen Stahl (Hrsg.): Prose research on the history of tradition: Contributions of the Würzburg research group to the method and evaluation. Tübingen 1985 (= texts and text history. Volume 19), pp. 157–200; here: card 15.
  5. ↑ Google Ngram Viewer: Term "Weib" in Google Books from 1800 - 2008. Accessed January 5, 2018 .
  6. ↑ Google Trends: Google Search: Interest in the search term "woman" since 2004. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on September 6, 2017 ; accessed on January 5, 2018 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / trends.google.de
  7. ^ A b Gerd Fritz: Historical Semantics . Stuttgart 2006, p. 52 .
  8. ^ A b c Damaris Nübling, Antje Dammel, Janet Duke, Renata Szczepaniak: Historical Linguistics of German: An Introduction to the Principles of Language Change . 4th edition. Tübingen 2013, p. 123 .
  9. ^ Eugenio R. Luján: Semantic Change . In: Silvia Luraghi, Vit Bubenik (Ed.): The Bloomsbury Companion to Historical Linguistics . New York 2010, p. 296 .
  10. ↑ Muriel Schulz: The Semantic Derogation of Woman . New York 1975.
  11. ↑ WEIB, n . In: Jacob Grimm , Wilhelm Grimm : German Dictionary . Hirzel, Leipzig 1854–1961 ( woerterbuchnetz.de , University of Trier).
  12. ↑ Jörg Mildenberger: Anton Trutmann's 'Pharmacopoeia', Part II: Dictionary , Würzburg 1997 (= Würzburg medical historical research, 56), Volume V, p. 2304f.
  13. ^ Friedrich Kluge , Alfred Götze : Etymological dictionary of the German language . 20th ed., Ed. by Walther Mitzka , De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1967; Reprint (“21st unchanged edition”) ibid 1975, ISBN 3-11-005709-3 , p. 844 ( Weib ).
  14. ↑ DWDS: Woman
  15. ↑ Stefanie Engler (2010): Habitus and social space: On the use of Pierre Bourdieu's concepts in women's and gender research, in: Becker, Ruth / Kortendiek, Beate (ed.): Handbuch Frauen- und Geschlechtforschung. Theory methods empiricism. 3rd ext. and through Ed. Wiesbaden, pp. 257-268.