29-07-03 14:50, Richard Wordingham wrote:
>> Contamination happens from time to time. It's sporadic by its very
>> nature. English has <female> (rather than *femel < OFr. femelle)
>> obviously because of its folk-etymological relation to <male>, but
>> <woman> [wUm&n] has not been remodelled as "woo-MAN" by the same
>> logic.
>
> But '-man' is unstressed in all compounds of 'man',
> *including* 'woman'.
I wrote that only half-seriously, but as you've raised this point, some
recent compounds with <-man> (such as <spaceman>) tend to keep a full
vowel. I emphasised "-MAN" to indicate such a full pronunciation rather
than the location of primary stress. Anyway, my point is that <woman>
_could_ have been folk-etymologised as 'she that woos/seduces men' (a
<pickpocket>-type compound; <woo> is not unknown with a female agent);
such a thing, though possible, simply hasn't happened. Many 16th-17th c.
punsters couldn't resist the temptation (their interpretation was
usually 'woe [to the] man'), but it was just a play upon words that
didn't influence common usage.
Piotr