Were a gay and happy family wagon.jpg

''Were'' and ''wer'' are archaism, archaic terms for adult male humans and were often used for alliteration with wife as "were and wife" in Germanic-speaking cultures ( ang, wer, odt, wer, got, waír, ofs, wer, osx, wer, goh, wer, non, verr).

In Anglo-Saxon law ''wer'' was the value of a man's life. He could be required to pay his ''wer'' to the king as a penalty for crime. If he was murdered then his relatives were entitled to his wergild as compensation from the murderer.

Etymology and usage

The word has cognates in various other languages, for example, the words ' (as in virility) and ' (plural ' as in Fir Bolg) are the Latin and Irish language, Gaelic for a male human.

While this prefix may not be derived from the above word,Concise OED, entry "werewolf" in folklore and fantasy fiction, ''were-'' is often used as a affix, prefix applied to an animal name to indicate a type of therianthropic figure or shapeshifting, shapeshifter (''e.g.'' "were-boar"). Hyphenation used to be mandatory, but is now commonly dropped, as in werecat and wererat. This usage can be seen as a back-formation from ''werewolf'' (literally, "man-wolf"), as there is no equivalent ''wifwolf'' or ''wyfwolf'' yet attested.

See also

* List of common false etymologies of English words#Other for a longer discussion of wer, wyf, and mann
* Man (word)

* For shapeshifters:
** Cynanthropy
** Lycanthropy (disambiguation)
** Mannaz
** Skin-walker
** Therianthropy
** Werecat
** Werehyena
** Were-jaguar
** Wererat
** Werewolf

References

{{reflist

Etymologies
English words