Ggtkuk

The word das Weib, meaning woman, is grammatically neuter. While the gender of nouns is generally unpredictable from their meaning, it is unusual that a word with such an explicitly feminine meaning (can't get more feminine in meaning than "woman"!) would be grammatically neuter.

Is there a simple explanation for this, based on the history / etymology of the word?

I am expecting something comparable to the explanation of why Fräulein is also neuter: because the diminutive suffix -lein always creates neuter words. I expect the explanation for Weib would need to go back much further in history though (the Old English cognate, wif, was also neuter).

Feel free to migrate to Linguistics.SE if it fits better there.

Since the etymology of Weib is unknown (1,2), there is also no way to explain its gender.

Several comments and answers seem to implicate that grammatical gender and biological sex are two completely different things. This is simply wrong. There is a strong correlation between grammatical gender and biological sex in all Indo-European languages with a distinction between masculine and feminine genders. The split into masculine and feminine genders is also assumed to be rooted in the distinction between biological sexes and goes back to some time in the Proto-Indo-European period. It is assumed that the Proto-Indo-European language originally only had a distinction between animate and inanimate objects and that the animate 'gender' split into masculine and feminine, while the inanimate gender turned into neuter. In the North Germanic languages and some Slavic languages, there is still remains of a gender-like distinction between animate and inanimate things.

There are exeptions, e.g. the already mentioned German words 'Fräulein' and 'Mädchen', which are neuter because all diminutive forms are neuter, but in general, most words solely referring to male persons are of the masculine grammatical gender and most words solely referring to female persons are of the feminine grammatical gender. With a few more exceptions, but still in general, this also applies to words referring to animals. It is a very legit question to ask why 'das Weib' does not follow the general rule.

'Das Weib' and its cognates is or has been neuter in most Germanic languages. The word dates at least back to Proto-Germanic in the period before common era, and was already then neuter. There are conflicting information about the origin of the word. Wiktionary relates the word possibly to Proto-Indo-European *gʰwíh₂bʰ-, which had a different meaning.

One likely explanation, is actually that the word, be it *gʰwíh₂bʰ- or not, originally was of neuter gender, but had a different meaning and therefore did not deviate from the usual correlation. While the meaning changed to 'a female person', the neuter gender was kept.

First of all you always should be aware of two facts:

1. The grammatical gender is a property of a noun (i.e. of a word). It is not a property of the thing that is named with this noun.


2. The biological sexus of a person and the grammatical gender of a word that is used to name this person are different things.

An example for #1:

The english word "car" can be translated in may ways into German. The possible translations are not perfect synonyms, but when we are are talking about a rusty old limousine you can translate »the car« (which has no gender at all in English) in these three ways into German:

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  Das Auto

  
  

  
  
  

  This is a neuter noun and it is the standard translation for "car".

  
  


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  Der Wagen

  
  

  
  
  

  This is a masculine noun and it means literal "the carriage" but is often used for bigger cars like limousines.

  
  


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  Die Karre

  
  

  
  
  

  This is a feminine noun and it is used for shabby old cars.

  
  

So, while these nouns have three different grammatical genders, they still can be uses as names for the very same car.

Other examples for #2:

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  Das Mädchen

  
  

  
  
  

  This also is a neuter noun, and it means girl. It is a diminutive, and in German all diminutives are neuter.

  
  


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  Das Fräulein

  
  

  
  
  

  Again a diminutive that was used for young ladies. It is outdated and considered not to be political correct anymore.

  
  


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  Die Tunte

  
  

  
  
  

  This is a female noun used for some men (la-di-da gay man)

  
  


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  Das Kind

  
  

  
  
  

  Meaning: Child. It is a neuter noun, but is used for persons, who are male or female-

  
  


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  Das Baby

  
  

  
  
  

  Meaning: Baby, toddler. Same as before.