before 900; Middle English womman, wimman, Old English wīfman,  equivalent to wīf  female + man  human being; see wife, man¹
The Old English wifman meant "female human" (man or mann had a default meaning of "male human," but could also be used generically to refer to a person of unspecified gender, corresponding to Modern English "one" or "someone").^[1] The medial labial consonants coalesced to create the modern form "woman"; the initial element, which meant "female," underwent semantic narrowing to the sense of a married woman ("wife").
Dora