I recently read Jaquez Barzun’s “From Dawn to Decadence”, which includes a digression on the word “man”. He notes that in its origins it actually is a gender-neutral word indicating person, with “woman” deriving from “wife-man” (man who is a wife). To use racial terms, this is not like appending “white” to words, because “white” means a color rather than person. It is like deeming non-whites “colored”, however nonsensical the practice may be (as illustrated in the poem “White Fella”).
I can’t recommend the book as a whole, when I hear the word “culture” I reach for my gun.
I used to mention that derivation whenever the subject came up IRL (with the rather unfortunate gloss that therefore “man” really was gender-neutral and women should not feel left out by its exclusive use), until I realized that usage 800+ years ago has little to no influence on the current meaning of the word.
No one ever noticed the fallacy, which is depressing now that I think about it. Don’t count on others to fix your thinking is the lesson, I guess.
The etymology of the word “man” is completely irrelevant to its present use. This isn’t some obscure term like “ironic” for which it would be reasonable to claim that common usage is mistaken—this is one of the ten most common nouns in the English language. The common usage is as the only formal term for male human beings.
Were this thread a discussion of the evolution of gendered terms in English, your remarks would be apt. Were it a novel argument in the dialectic of gender in English, your remarks would be apt. It is neither.
I recently read Jaquez Barzun’s “From Dawn to Decadence”, which includes a digression on the word “man”. He notes that in its origins it actually is a gender-neutral word indicating person, with “woman” deriving from “wife-man” (man who is a wife). To use racial terms, this is not like appending “white” to words, because “white” means a color rather than person. It is like deeming non-whites “colored”, however nonsensical the practice may be (as illustrated in the poem “White Fella”).
I can’t recommend the book as a whole, when I hear the word “culture” I reach for my gun.
I used to mention that derivation whenever the subject came up IRL (with the rather unfortunate gloss that therefore “man” really was gender-neutral and women should not feel left out by its exclusive use), until I realized that usage 800+ years ago has little to no influence on the current meaning of the word.
No one ever noticed the fallacy, which is depressing now that I think about it. Don’t count on others to fix your thinking is the lesson, I guess.
The etymology of the word “man” is completely irrelevant to its present use. This isn’t some obscure term like “ironic” for which it would be reasonable to claim that common usage is mistaken—this is one of the ten most common nouns in the English language. The common usage is as the only formal term for male human beings.
Were this thread a discussion of the evolution of gendered terms in English, your remarks would be apt. Were it a novel argument in the dialectic of gender in English, your remarks would be apt. It is neither.