Welcome to the Allusionist, in which I, Helen Zoltzman, dredge language and flower,

dip it in beaten egg, roll it in breadcrumbs and fry it until golden brown.

Coming up in today's show, you've just carved this hideous statue that you can't bear

to look at.

To warm up, here's some word history.

Mark from North Carolina writes, could you cover the etymology for Werewolf?

I've always wondered why it's not simply man wolf or something like that.

Mark trust your instincts because the were means man.

So it does mean man wolf.

Were was the old English for man and a thousand issues ago,

there used to be the word were man, which didn't mean a man who at full moon turned into a man.

It was just a male person because back then man was a non-gender specific term that meant

a female person was a weaf man and that word evolved to become woman.

So if you were wondering whether the word woman is sexist because it contains the word man,

etymology says it's not and neither is the son in person because person is from the Latin persona,

meaning a character in a play or the mask worn by a character in a play.

And female also came from Latin femella, a young woman and around the 14th century it was altered

to the current spelling because they thought the word must have something to do with male.

Of course women can just have their own things.

So those words aren't sexist but werewolf is because shouldn't women be able to be werewolf's

two or weaf wolves? Where's the mythological creatures lib movement? On with the show.

Talking about music is like dancing about architecture, said Elvis Costello or Frank Zapper

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