| They've certainly come to appear that way, but in female/male (and, to a lesser extent, woman/man) the etymology is distinct. Female comes through Old French "femelle", which ultimately traces back to Latin "femina" (where we also get "feminine", et al.).[0] Male comes through Old French "masle", derived from Latin "mas" (from which we get "masculine").[1] It does appear that the ultimate transformation that aligned their spellings _does_ come from the many-centuries-old belief that they shared a common root (see the article on "female"). Woman was indeed a modifier on "man", originally "wifman", but at a time when "man" was almost exclusively in the sense of a human being (e.g., "mankind"). Prior to that, the sexes were "wer" (as in "werewolf") and "wif".[2] A couple centuries after "wifman" is first attested (around which time "werman" was also present), "wer" died off in favor of "man" and we ended up with the roots of our modern words.[3] None of this to say that people should not continue evolving the language - the modern connotation and perception is far more important in informing how things continue to change. Just hoping to point out that the words actually _weren't_ derived that way. Your point does, of course, still stand in the facts that "female" was modified to resemble "male" and "wifman" remained when "werman" died out, but this doesn't seem (to me) as demeaning as the idea that they have always been modifiers of the words referring exclusively to male humans. [0] https://www.etymonline.com/word/female#etymonline_v_5841 [1] https://www.etymonline.com/word/male#etymonline_v_42792 [2] https://www.etymonline.com/word/woman#etymonline_v_10826 [3] https://www.etymonline.com/word/man#etymonline_v_6766 |