 In the Early Medieval language of Old English , the term wicca ( / <unk> / ) was a masculine <unk> for sorcerer ; <unk> was its feminine counterpart . They are ancestral to Modern English witch . The Modern English term Wicca took the Old English wicca as its basis , although the two are fundamentally two distinct words with differing meanings , pronunciation , and <unk> usage , with nearly a millennium between their respective <unk> . 
