Archive for Gender
auncle, ommer, ontle: gender-neutral aunt/uncle term?
Swedish gender-neutral pronoun: hen
Spanish words that break the -o/-a gender rule
Vocal fry and dismissing young women’s voices
dd { margin-bottom: 20px; } I was completely oblivious to the vocal fry/“creaky voice” phenomenon until today. A friend posted about it, and I did a quick search, and...
Mx
The other day, Mary Anne linked to an article that claimed that the new gender-neutral title “Mx” was being officially added to the OED. I'm not linking to that article...
More on gender-neutral pronouns
I've written about gender-neutral pronouns before. Here's an article from a couple months ago about the origin of gender-neutral "he" along with a discussion of singular "they."...
Ship gender
It's traditional in English to refer to ships using female pronouns. I've known that all my life, but I think this is the first time I've consciously noticed a case...
First occurrence of “Ms.”
Ben Zimmer may have tracked down the first use of the word "Ms." Believe it or not, the word was suggested in 1901 in the Springfield, Massachusetts Sunday Republican. The...
gayelle
Two lesbian friends of mine alerted me tonight to a new word: "gayelle." It's a fascinating attempt to coin a new word. The people over at gayelle.org (a.k.a. sapphicchic.com) are...