2177: 'Man' as an Interjection Nov 30, 2020

The path that led to the current uses of 'man' is a long and storied one. In addition to the varied uses it has as a noun, it is also an exclamation because that it used to be a pronoun. That might seem strange, but in Old English it meant what 'one' means now (pronominally) but it was also used generically for humanity, but by the Middle Ages it was used for familiar address, sort of like how 'bro' (or also still 'man') are used today. It is from this sense that it is believed that in the 15th century it started to be used as as interjection to express shock or just emphasis. Since then it has only become more popular.

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'.