Letter shaping/orientation/positioning of {M, F} vs {W, M} (signifying/denoting gender in forms/data tabulations/presentations] [closed]
For W and M (Woman and Man) there is equal logoey balance logologically.
However for M and F (Male and Female) the orientation just the logo of the letter F is sideways at a 90° angle change and drops a line. That is not the case of W and M which seem to have greater logorythmic equality.
As language change and language evolution occured is there any trace why and if there was explicit reasoning? What field traces the designed(?) lettering of wording? Either for the full word attached/associated, or reasoning if such words were chosen for their given first letter effects?
After asking by word of mouth I never heard a reason why, is it numerology er letterology (the math and lettering is often used to sort and organize web data not just official forms, just the MW/MF are often biased in their ordering as well not any official rule, seemingly) or maybe is there a history?
Given the significance, why is M/F not homogenously balanced like W/M is?
Solution 1:
The words man and woman came from man and a compound of that and wif (the same word that shifted meaning and became wife). However, the populace who first used those words would not have seen the “equal logoey balance logologically”. These Proto-Germanic speakers, if they were even able to read at all, would have used letters that weren’t M and W. English was written in runes before it switched to the Latin alphabet, which used ᛗ and ᚹ (the mann and wyn runes, respectively).
Also, perhaps it is wrong to look so closely at man, when wif was so frequently paired with another word for male human, wer (which is still found in werewolf). Just look at Beowulf: “wera ond wifa” (“men and women”), and other Old English literature such as The Fortunes of Men and The Phoenix. (In fact I do not see a single example of “man” paired with any word for woman in the OE poetry examples given by Binomials in the History of English: Fixed and Flexible. And even the Middle English Dictionary makes note of wer and wif as a collocation.)
And male and female are just simply two words that have no etymological connection at all. Or at least they didn’t until the 14th century when the spelling of femelle was changed to resemble that of male.