Woman

How to spell woman

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce woman

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does woman mean?

1. nounAn adult female human being.

Woman in a sentence

• The woman in the corner office runs the entire finance team.

• Every woman on the panel had decades of legal experience.

Where does woman come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Woman comes from the Old English wīfmann, a compound that literally meant 'female person', built from wīf meaning 'woman' or 'wife' and mann meaning 'person' or 'human being' in general. In the earliest period mann was a neutral word for any human, so wīfmann simply marked the female one, while a male was a wǣpenmann or wer. Over the centuries the awkward consonant cluster softened, the f sound dropped, and wīfmann became wimman and then woman, while the rounded vowel of the old wīf is the reason we still write 'wo' even though we say something closer to 'wu'. The plural underwent a separate shift, giving the irregular 'women' with its surprising /i/ sound. That hidden history is exactly why the spelling traps people: the 'o' you write does not match the 'u' you hear.

How the word is built

• wo- (from Old English wīf: female, wife)
• -man (from mann: person, human being)