I don't know if you're implying that those haven't been used interchangeably for a very long time or not. Regardless, I'll say it's super old. Man refers to any human. Mankind is humanity. We also say man and woman for gender, which is also super old.

[–] Ultraviolet@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Modern English is everything from the late 17th century Great Vowel Shift onward. Blame linguists.

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 2 points 7 months ago

Yeah, I hate the word "modern". It's about a 50/50 that it's being used to say "now" or being used in a technical sense, which is referring to something that really isn't modern anymore. I hope everyone has learned their lesson that time moves on past them and not to use "modern" as part of a name for anything. The fact that "post-modern" is often used to describe things that aren't even new anymore makes it even worse.

[–] ASeriesOfPoorChoices@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago

I'm saying that before modern English, we used were and wyf for man and woman.