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Originally Posted by Lindy
Well, yeah. I agree.  It's also interesting that women will accept neutering a formerly male term and applying it to females. Men never do that. Can you think of any? |
I can't think of any off the top of my head, but I'm reminded how, in recent years, the word
actor has come to stand in for "thespian" of either gender, meaning that
actress is becoming archaic. And this reminds me of the truly archaic race-based feminizations that are now deemed rather offensive:
Jewess and
Negress come to mind (of course
Negro applied to blacks is quite archaic in many circles now too).
But as far as a feminine term becoming a neutral term, I can't think of any. However, perhaps we can consider changes in terms for political correctness, such as
stewardess. Not only was the femininity of the term problematic, but now there are males who hold these jobs, which makes the title "flight attendant" more apt. The same goes for
seamstress, I imagine, and other terms like it.
Quote:
Men never accept being called by a formerly female term. "Hey guys, gals is now officially gender neutral. We men are now OK with being called gals, right?
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It's not a matter of acceptance so much as it is usage. I suppose one possibility of this is the term
nurse, as applied to those in the nursing profession. Some people say, "Oh, he's a male nurse," when it's actually apt to just say, "Oh, he's a nurse." Here's the
Oxford note on the origin of the word:
Quote:
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Origin: late Middle English: contraction of earlier nourice, from Old French, from late Latin nutricia, feminine of Latin nutricius '(person) that nourishes', from nutrix, nutric- 'nurse', from nutrire 'nourish'. The verb was originally a contraction of NOURISH, altered under the influence of the noun
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So what you see is that
nurse is a word that does have a feminine influence (the Old French
nourice from the feminized Latin
nutricia). Plus, of course, nursing was deemed a female profession for a very long time.