the other day i looked up the etymologies of every word i could think of that meant "male (or gender-neutral) magic-user" and the results were way more interesting than i expected so here they are in a thread:
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Very cool.
I wonder why, exactly, the words in that semantic field are so often gendered?
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offhand i don't think they're particularly *more* gendered than words for types of professions generally but not sure. compare like
sorcerer : sorceress ::
waiter : waitress ::
priest : priestess
etc etc
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I was thinking about "witch" mostly, I guess, and then "wizard" and "warlock", but maybe that's all and three gendered word with no direct equivalent is nothing exceptional