Virginity - Origins of The Term

Origins of The Term

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 or "sexually inexperienced woman". As in Latin, the English word is also often used with wider reference, by relaxing the age, gender or sexual criteria. Hence, more mature women can be virgins (The Virgin Queen), men can be virgins, and potential initiates into many fields can be colloquially termed virgins; for example, a skydiving "virgin". In the latter usage, virgin simply means uninitiated.

The Latin word likely 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".

The first known use of virgin in English is found in a Middle English manuscript held at Trinity College, Cambridge of about 1200:

Ðar haueð ... martirs, and confessors, and uirgines maked faier bode inne to women. — Trinity College Homilies 185

In this, and many later contexts, the reference is specifically Christian, alluding to members of the Ordo Virginum (Order of Virgins), which applies to the consecrated virgins known to have existed since the early church from the writings of the Church Fathers.

By about 1300, the word was expanded to apply also to Mary, the mother of Jesus, hence to sexual virginity explicitly:

Conceiud o þe hali gast, born o þe 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, until by about 1400 we find:

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.

The German word for "virgin" is Jungfrau. Jungfrau literally means "young woman", but is not used in this sense. Instead "junge Frau" can be used. The rather dated German word for a young (unmarried) woman, without implications regarding sexuality, is Fräulein. Fräulein was 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 also has a specific word for a male virgin Jüngling ("Youngling"). It is, however, dated too and rarely used. 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…". Note that the term used for the starsign virgo also is Jungfrau, which makes the above movie title ambiguous. 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". Males presenting with phimosis who injure their frenulum during first penetration are said to be "uncartridged" as opposed to "cartridged" before first intercourse.

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.

By extension from its primary sense, the idea that a virgin has a sexual "blank slate", unchanged by any past intimate connection or experience, leads to the abstraction of unadulterated purity.