The word “maid” in English used to mean a young, unmarried/virginal person, with no gender qualifications. That’s about the only one I can think of, though.
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Curious, In Spanish we had a different word in base of the servant was virgin or not. But that’s only for women. Poor nobles had to marriage them before x age. And if the girl end up pregnant. There were a big drama. In the Quijote that’s part of the plot.
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@Gower @Scribblesome
Thanks for the lessons 
I plan to do more research on the old English and see whether I can write in a more fluent manner… lol
@poison_mara @Felicity_Banks @MizArtist33
Haha… of course I can never dare to apply these courteous gestures in real world… but if a story is based on medieval fantasy, perhaps they are acceptable…
As for sleepy hollow, the conversations between protagonists were intriguing and that’s what make me stay interest in it, although not so about the ending, I thought for once there was a story where the witch can be good and relevant but they made her turn Evil…
Speaking of the word " witch" , I understand I must be careful on using this term as well… because somehow it had become a disrespectful term…
Witch is actually a profession in fantasy world, and the male counterpart is refer as warlock… it was suppose to be a cool profession in an adventuring party, but I notice it had been used in disrespectful manner… and people were asking why there should be a witch in your party, which of course surprised me
A good alternative to “witch” is mage I think. I don’t know historically when it came into use, but it’s gender neutral and doesn’t come with any historical baggage.
I think trying to use witch as something that isn’t bad is a pretty recent thing and for the most part “witch” has always had negative connotations. When I think witch the first things I think of are all pretty bad–wicked witches, witches as antagonists, worst of all the various historical witch trials. As an American, I think of Salem first, but I know other places had their own. I know some things have good witches and the word doesn’t strictly have to be used negatively, but it does have a pretty antagonistic tilt.
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Witch is a term that can be used for every magical women, although the connotations tend to be pejorative. Historically, one of the earliest examples is the Seer of Endor, that was later translated to the witch of Endor.
In different legends and fantasy works, there seems to be a distinction between magic and witchcraft, so I’m not entirely sure if “mage” can always be a good translation. And although the term has had negative connotations through history, I don’t think that it’s necessarily bad. Nowadays, witches have become complex figures, with motivations and backstories.
In fact, witches are sometimes used in fiction to explore concepts like gender norms, female empowerment; the witch hunts are rarely portrayed positively. Sometimes witches don’t have a particular connotation and are just women with magic, a female equivalent for wizard.
This term is very dependent of the work in which it appears, so I don’t think there needs to be a problem with it as long as the author establishes early what does the concept “witch” means in the world of the narrative.
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By the way, What would be the male equivalent for witch?
I mean, in spanish it’s easy: we have “brujo” and “bruja”, but I don’t know if there’s a term for men in English.
My OED lists 890 as the earliest attestation for the word in English, and 1674 as the earliest citation for “witch” in the phrase “witch of Endor.”
Bizarrely, the OED lists the first definition of witch as “A man who practises witchcraft or magic; a magician, sorcerer, wizard” and then supports it with
Ða fæmnan, þe gewuniað onfon gealdorcræftigan, & scinlæcan, & wiccan.
Even a non-Old English reader can clearly see the word “fæmnan” there meaning women.
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Warlock, although it has darker connotations than witch.
Wizard definitely seems male to me. Sorcerer.
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You play too much D&D. /joking
But seriously, while the most common modern power fantasy terms, those are basically a jumble of randomly pulled terms when discussing things in a historical context.
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To elaborate further, for thou/thee/thy… these three forms work in the same contexts as I/me/my. “Thou,” in addition to taking -est with verbs, also goes with “shalt” instead of “shall,” “art” instead of “are,” and similar ones.
Also note that “thou” is a singular pronoun. The plural would be “ye” and “you,” which is where we got the word “you” in the first place… “you” was also used in place of “thou” to address superiors, so it became more polite and eventually supplanted “thou” as the second person pronoun for most speakers.
I’d argue that it’s best to use these sparingly unless you’re really going for Shakespearean language in general, or writing in a dialect that still retains “thou” and/or “thee” (in which case the grammar may be a bit different anyway.)
It’s related to the word “magus,” as in the magi, ultimately going back to ancient Persia. 
I’ve been checking a lot of these terms in etymonline, which is a nice resource for these purposes… it frequently cites the OED, so that can be helpful if you don’t have access to that.
warlock | Search Online Etymology Dictionary, for example, goes back to a word meaning “traitor”… 
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Less D&D and more various fantasy novels, but guilty. I’m not sure where else terms like that would be used in a modern context.
I was just trying to think of terms that were male, as opposed to “witch.”
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I still need to read that book. Though I hear the insult part came from the southern parodies of it.
[quote=“MockTurtle, post:67, topic:24916”]
By the way, What would be the male equivalent for witch?
[/quote] Witch applied to everyone (Satan worshipers) historically but modernly we usually use warlock.
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IRL Warlock can be a contentious term, because it literally means “traitor”.
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I am really digging how this has evolved into a etymological discussion. 
I’m such a word nerd. Comes at a good time, since I have been struggling with this very issue in trying to recreate a historically accurate (but still intelligible for modern speakers) speech pattern for a character in our WIP.
Unfortunately, the link to my favorite site I used to help me wade through it has been down today, so I didn’t bother posting, but I appreciate the other resources everyone has been adding. Very interesting stuff!
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Modern pagans had exactly this etymological debate; most male neo-pagans, particularly Wiccans, call themselves witches.
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I thought that the “traitor” part was because people believed that they were in league with the Devil/Satan (that’s why they could do magic), thus they were “traitors” of the church, rather than just “oath breakers”? After all, in the Middle Ages religion had a lot of power and heresy was a big no, so anyone who didn’t agree with their faith was “inherently” bad or consorting with evil(ness).
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The word in English is super old. I think the first written attestation is somewhere in the 900s, so the word itself is certainly older than that.
Wiggend stopon ut of ðam inne ofstum miclum, weras winsade, þe ðone wærlogan, laðne leodhatan, læddon to bedde nehstan siðe.
The fighting men, the drunk ones, strode out of the room with great haste, whom the liar had led to the bed for the last time.
“wærlogan” there is much better translated as “liar” or “scoundrel” than “oath-breaker.” You can totally see how a word that means liar or scoundrel gets transformed into “oath-breaker” or “truth-denier” (both good translations of the word “warlock”) in the Christian context, but I’m not sure that the religious angle is baked into the word.
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This makes a lot of sense considering historically within almost every language there is a gender division which is sorta neat. And in our own language it does exist but a lot of it is in the tone you say it.
Like you rarely call a grown man ‘cute’ unless it’s derogatory or a put down the same has been done with women too but not as much but as time goes on a lot of the separations in language break down (with the whole equality struggles).
So it’s really cool to use gendered words to the opposite effects if that’s what you’re going for. But being aware that it exists turns that facet of the language into a writing tool on its own.
Sry just had to share my random thoughts. Hope I didn’t break a train of thought.
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I learn all of these via Dungeons & Dragons, where they have a specific title for every type of Magicians and even classified Magic Based on 7-10 schools of Magic if i am not mistaken… the title(s) was given to Wizards (in general) based on their specialty in the school of magic such as Enchanter / Enchantress , Invoker, Necromancer, Sorcerer / Sorceress , Conjurer , Transmuter , Alchemist etc
Witch is “unique” in Dungeons & Dragons (at least in the version i know) because she didn’t exactly drawn into these school of Magic, she is somewhat getting her power from alchemy / weird ingredient , nature and some runes drawing … what i was worrying was that “witch” had been used quite often (recently) to discredit the female gender, especially during an election campaign
Hey… now since you mention the term “Pagans”, i had been notified by those from Eastern Europe or even from the British Isles that this term is sort of “disrespectful” to their culture and religion(s) , from what they “told” me previously(via forum) was that this term was specifically applied to those who were not converted by Roman Empire and the Pope during medieval era, and they claim that some of the British Isles are still believe in the religion of Nature , the same religion as the Druid, while the Eastern Europeans still hold strong to their God/Goddess … I hope i didn’t offend anybody , since this is sensitive issue, maybe @Gower will understand better regarding this since he understand more on medieval history
But i thought “Pagans” is another term we should avoid ?
“Pagan” is definitely one of those words used specifically to exclude and say “you are not in our religious group.” So it can be hurtful that way, and I always have to carefully explain what’s going on when I teach Thomas Malory and they talk about killing paynims (which is the same word).
On the other hand, I have lots of friends who cheerfully refer to themselves as pagans and subscribe to interesting, non-mainstream religions. I think the positive meaning of the word is way more recent; a reclamation. I don’t think there were a lot of people in the tenth century saying to themselves, “I’m a pagan.”
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