Query: Why "she" in reference to a ship?

[Dennis Baron]

You could look at some articles on gender for inanimates in English
by T. Hilding Svartengren in AS and DN back in the late 1920s; he had
an article in the 1950s in Moderna Sprak as well. Don't remember
much, though I read them some time ago. Again, probably thin on
expanation but thick on data.

Dennis


On Jan 17, 2006, at 3:22 PM, FRITZ JUENGLING wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       FRITZ JUENGLING <juengling_fritz at SALKEIZ.K12.OR.US>
> Subject:      Re: Query: Why "she" in reference to a ship?
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>
> I think just about everyone has wondered this.  Certainly, it comes
> from Star Trek, where Kirk always refers to the Enterprise as she.
> Seriously, I have heard that 'she' (BTW, I wrote an article on the
> etymology of 'she' a few years ago) is used for ships, cars, etc.
> as terms of endearment--the speaker feels some sort of closeness to
> that object as he would to his sweetheart.  This explanation sounds
> a bit dubious to me, tho.
>
> If I remember correctly, in OE it was 'seo scip' --feminine.
> Perhaps modern 'she' is a remnant of OE gender.
>
> Wilson's comment "was neuter, as it still is, logically, in
> contemporary English" brings up an interesting point.  The terms
> 'masculine, feminine and neuter' rarely correspond to, nor do they
> mean, male and female and sexless. (Of course, I'm not telling
> anyone anything new.)  Those are the worst labels that could
> possibly have been thought up.  Given that, it's no more logical
> that 'ship' should be neuter in OE (if it was) or contemporary
> English than feminine or masculine.  One of the greatest joys in
> teaching first year German is watching the looks on students' faces
> when they learn that Fra"ulein and Ma"dchen are neuter.  Some
> students get the gender thing quickly, but others never really get
> past erroneous masculine=male, etc.
>  Fritz J
>
>
>
>>>> hwgray at GMAIL.COM 01/15/06 11:15PM >>>
>
> In Old English, which also had grammatical gender, the word for "ship"
> was neuter, as it still is, logically, in contemporary English.
> Unfortunately, I know nothing of the history of the convention of
> using the feminine pronoun to refer to ships.
>
> -Wilson
>
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