SPECIAL WORDS FOR SEX AND RELATIONSHIP 193 



originally used figuratively for woman. If its original 

 sense had been woman, then the formation of such a 

 compound as wifman seems inexplicable. The wif in 

 wlfman could not primitively have had the force of 

 woman more than the maegeft in maegeftman had 

 primitively the force of maiden. 1 The wif marks rather 

 some idea which is associated with the fully developed 

 woman (O.H.G. wipheit is glossed menstrua), as distin- 

 guished from the mdget or maid, with the active child- 

 bearer rather than with a future potentiality of child- 

 bearing. If, then, we turn to seek other explanations than 

 those provided by the philologists, it is not only because 

 from the anthropological standpoint the instincts of sex 

 and of feeding form the basis of most primitive nomen- 

 clature, but it is also because the latter explanations fail 

 to meet the difficulty as to the neuter gender of weib. 



In the first place, we might note that the Sanskrit 

 vi, or a fuller form vip* had a sexual meaning ; that it 

 is used for receiving seed, conceiving, and so also for 

 sowing, procreating ; this sense is probably connected 

 with the quick motion of shaking or throwing out as 

 in sowing. There is also a Bactrian word vip for sexual 

 intercourse, and another vipta, used of a male lover. 

 Further, in Sanskrit vapra is a seed-field, and vapa- 

 nam, seed. As Deecke has already indicated, however, 

 to deduce wip from this sense of vip is hardly in accord- 

 ance with the assumed passive function. Still, starting 



1 As we have seen in A.S. maga is womb and so blood-relative, but with, the 

 notion of kin comes that of power ; maga, is potens, and maegeft is might, and so 

 to maiden. The power of reproduction, of giving birth, is the symbol of all 

 power ; the chief deity in the mother-age is the Earth, as All-mother, and every 

 tribal deity is a goddess of fertility, e.g. x -^^ as name for Demeter. 



2 Sanskrit vip is tremble, shake, O.N. veifa, O.H.G. weibdnis shake, vibrate. 



VOL. II 



