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Etymology
The word virgin comes via Old French virgine from the root form of Latin virgo, genitive virgin-is, meaning literally "maiden" or "virgin"—a sexually intact young woman.[5] The Latin word probably arose by analogy with a suit of lexemes based on vireo, meaning "to be green, fresh or flourishing", mostly with botanic reference—in particular, virga meaning "strip of wood".[6] The first known use of virgin in English comes from an Anglo-Saxon manuscript held at Trinity College, Cambridge.
c. 1200: Dar hauee ... martirs, and confessors, and uirgines maked faier bode inne to women. — Trinity College Homilies 185 [ms B.15.34 (369)]
In this, and many later contexts, the reference is specifically Christian, alluding to members of the order of virgins known to have existed since the early church from the writings of the Church Fathers.[7] However, within about a century, the word was expanded to apply also to Mary, the mother of Jesus, hence to sexual virginity explicitly.
c. 1300: Conceiud o te hali gast, born o te virgine marie. — Cursor Mundi 24977
Further expansion of the word to include virtuous (or naïve) young women, irrespective of religious connection, occurred over about another century.
c. 1400: Voide & vacand of vices as virgyns it ware. — The Wars of Alexander 4665
These are just three of the eighteen definitions of virgin from the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED1, pages 230-232). Most of the OED1 definitions, however, are very similar.
Frank Harris (1923) claims to have given the following humorous etymology in a lecture, " 'vir,' as everyone knows, is Latin for a man, while 'gin' is good old English for a trap; virgin is therefore a mantrap."[8] Other, serious, but unsupported etymologies exist in print.
The German for "virgin" is Jungfrau. Although Jungfrau literally means "young woman", a standard formal German word for a young woman, without implications regarding sexuality, is Fräulein. Fräulein can be used in German, as a title of respect, equivalent to current usage of Miss in English. Jungfrau is the word reserved specifically for sexual inexperience. As Frau means "woman", it suggests a female referent. Unlike English, German has a specific word for a male virgin Jüngling ("Youngling"). It is, however, rarely used in this sense. Jungfrau, with some masculine modifier, is more typical, as evidenced by the film, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, about a 40 year-old male virgin, titled in German, "Jungfrau (40), männlich, sucht…".[9] German also distinguishes between young women and girls, who are denoted by the word Mädchen. The English cognate "maid" was often used to imply virginity, especially in poetry. German is not the only language to have a specific name for male virginity; in French, male virgins are called "puceau" or "Joseph" whereas a number of indigenous Bolivians, males presenting with phimosis who injure their frenulum during first penetration are said to be "uncartridged" as opposed to "cartridged" before first intercourse.[10]
By contrast, the Greek word for "virgin" is parthenos (παρθένος, see Parthenon). Although typically applied to women, like English, it is also applied to men, in both cases specifically denoting absence of sexual experience. When used of men, it does not carry a strong association of "never-married" status. However, in reference to women, historically, it was sometimes used to refer to an engaged woman—parthenos autou (παρθένος αὐτού, his virgin) = his fiancée as opposed to gunē autou (γυνή αὐτού, his woman) = his wife. This distinction is necessary due to there being no specific word for wife (or husband) in Greek.
Despite such definitions cited above, an alternative definition and understanding of the word 'virgin' has been discussed by Queer theorists. Kitzinger and Wilkinson write that Marilyn Frye, a lesbian feminist scholar described that the term 'virgin' "originally meant not women without experience of heterosexual intercourse but rather 'females who are willing to engage in chosen connections with males, [women] who are wild females, undomesticated females, [and] thoroughly defiant of patriarchal female heterosexuality' |
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