For other uses see Were (disambiguation).
Were and wer are archaic terms for adult male humans and were often used for alliteration with wife as "were and wife" in Germanic-speaking cultures[1] (ang|wer, odt|wer, got|waír, ofs|wer, osx|wer, goh|wer, non|verr).
In Anglo-Saxon law wer was the value of a man's life. He could be required to pay his wer to the king as a penalty for crime.[2] If he was murdered then his relatives were entitled to his wergild as compensation from the murderer.
The word has cognates in various other languages, for example, Latin Latin: vir (as in virility) and Gaelic Irish: fear (plural Irish: fir as in Fir Bolg) both mean a male human.
It is likely that wer forms part of a compound word in werewolf (man-wolf), although there are other proposed etymologies.[3] In folklore and fantasy fiction, were- is often prefixed to an animal name to indicate a therianthropic figure or shapeshifter (e.g. "were-boar"). Hyphenation used to be mandatory, but is now commonly dropped, as in werecat and wererat. There is no attested counterpart wifwylf or wyfwylf .