2152: man Nov 5, 2020

One of the oldest and certainly significant root across all Indo-European languages is 'man'. For sure it has broad-reaching senses that gave us many modern derivatives, but not only is it unclear where it comes from, but also across Germanic languages it pushed out an earlier word 'wer'. One theory on its origin connects it to another root *men- giving 'mind' and more obviously the Latin 'mēns', hence 'mention', 'admonish', 'demonstrate', and 'automatic' through Greek, but other linguists contest this idea. Another theory points to Germanic mythology involving a figure known in Latin as Mannus who was the progenitor of people, known in the language as *Mannaz. Either way, it was used as a generic term for humanity and the pronominal use—still seen in German 'man' for 'one'—before it pushed out 'wer' (hence 'werewolf') as a word for 'man' (as in male) by the 13th century. This process is similar to the generic Latin term 'homo' (hence the French 'homme') pushing out 'vir' for specifically male. In all these words though, it also had the sense of 'husband'.