‘No, darling, I certainly wouldn’t call you a witch,’ said my husband. ‘You’re not thin enough.’
The Oxford English Dictionary has just published a new entry for witch. It is less dismissive of old women. The former version spoke of a ‘repulsive-looking old woman’. Now it is ‘a term of abuse or contempt for a woman, especially one regarded as old, malevolent, or unattractive’.
In that sense it is still definitely a woman. But what has lexicographers in a ferment of excitement is the decision to undo the division of the main entry for witch into male and female. Before the Conquest it had only been formally distinguishable in the nominative singular: wicca (masculine) and wicce (feminine). The dictionary’s decision was not made without ‘some discussion’.
If wicca rings a bell it is because of a sensational intervention into language history.
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