 In the Early Medieval language of Old English , the term wicca ( / ˈwɪttʃɑː / ) was a masculine noun for sorcerer ; wicce 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 grammatical usage , with nearly a millennium between their respective floruits . 
