The archaic terms "were" and "wer" refer to an adult male human, often appearing alongside "wife" in Germanic languages. In Anglo-Saxon law, a man's "wer" represented the monetary value of his life, functioning as a penalty for crimes or, as "wergild," as compensation paid to his relatives if he was murdered. This ancient word has cognates in other languages, such as Latin "vir" and Gaelic "fear," both meaning a male. Most notably, "wer" forms the first part of "werewolf" (man-wolf) and is now widely used in folklore and fantasy fiction as a prefix to animal names—like "werecat" or "were-boar"—to indicate a shapeshifting figure.