Were

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 (Old English: were, German: Wehr, Dutch: weer, Gothic: waír, Old Frisian: wer, Old Saxon: wer, Old High German: wer, Old Norse: verr).

In folklore and fantasy fiction, were- is often used as a prefix applied to an animal name to indicate a type of lycanthropy and/or shapeshifter (e.g. "were-boar"). Hyphenation used to be mandatory but is now commonly dropped, as in werecat and wererat. This usage can be seen as a back-formation from werewolf (literally, "man-wolf"), as there is no equivalent wifewolf.

Gothic has a word translating kosmos, not derived from the same stem: faírhvus, used by Ulfilas in alternation with manasêþs. The corresponding West Germanic term is werold "world", literally wer "man" + ald "age". Gothic faírhvus is cognate to Old High German fërah, Old English feorh, terms expressing "lifetime" (aevum).

The word has cognates in various other languages, for example, the words vir (as in virility) and fear (plural fir as in Fir Bolg) are the Latin and Gaelic for a male human.

Were (disambiguation)

Were is an archaic term for an adult male human, now used as a prefix to indicate a type of shapeshifter.

Were may also refer to:

People

See also

WERE

WERE (1490 AM) – branded NewsTalk 1490 – is a commercial news/talk radio station licensed to Cleveland Heights, Ohio. Owned by Radio One, the station serves Greater Cleveland. In the Cleveland radio market, WERE is the AM affiliate for The Tom Joyner Morning Show, and the sole affiliate for Redding News Review, Red Eye Radio, and ABC News Radio, while sharing Keepin' it Real with Rev. Al Sharpton with sister station WJMO. Its studios are located along the Euclid Avenue Corridor in Cleveland's eastside, while the station transmitter resides near University Circle.

History

Call letters

In 1932, the FCC assigned the call letters WERE to a station in Erie, Pennsylvania, which had been known as WEDH.

WSRS

WSRS, founded by Samuel R. Sague on December 12, 1947, broadcast 24-hours a day on 1490 kHz while licensed to suburban Cleveland Heights, and had an FM sister station of WSRS-FM at 95.3 MHz (now WKRK-FM). WSRS (AM)/WSRS-FM billed itself as the "Community Information Voice of Cleveland".