Weef in Modern English

Old english used wer to refer to a man and weef to referring to a woman. During the middle english period, were meaning man started to disappear,. The word man began to be used in its place to mean an adult male. This dual usage still exists in modern English. So we often have to modify the word man when it's used in its original sense as persons or humans. We take a word like mankind and we have to make a new word to accompany it - womankind.