attributive freshman

[hpst@earthlink.net]

What do you call an actress these days, a woman actor or simply an actor?

As far as I can tell the use of a word which denotes the sex of a person is
going out of style and therefore the use of gender specific words denoting
the sex of the person is disappearing..

If I were to argue about the reason for this I would suggest that it is due
to the fact that the use of the female ending of such words as actress
implies an invidious distinction between actors and actresses and as a
result many actresses choose to call themselves actors which puts them on
the same level as their male colleagues.

If I wanted to carry my argument further I would suggest that the male
endings of such words as actress or actor and the current dominance of the
latter could be explained in terms of the fact that historically men
dominated the stage and that ess ending could be considered to suggest that
actors did something different from what actresses did which of course is
not true.

Or versus ess?: historical or cultural with roots back in socio-cultural
history which in turn explains the reason that freshmen are freshmen and
not fresh persons.

The men got there first and as a result the words they were called by came
to dominate and became more prestigious and in turn were adopted by women.

 Anyone have any better explanation for this phenomenon?

Page Stephens

> [Original Message]
> From: Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Date: 11/2/2006 2:52:11 PM
> Subject: Re: [ADS-L] attributive freshman
>
> On 11/2/06, FRITZ JUENGLING <juengling_fritz at salkeiz.k12.or.us> wrote:
> >
> > This has been a topic of conversation in our English Department for some
> > time.  I am happy with freshman (and am also a German speaker).  Do you
> > also want 'sophomores girls', 'juniors girls,' and 'seniors girls'?
>
> A more apt comparison would be the very frequent use of attributive
> "women" with plural heads: "women journalists", "women lawyers",
> "women surgeons", etc. "Freshmen" now seems to be traveling the same
> path. There aren't many other "-men" plurals that are common enough to
> get this treatment, but note that most major US dictionaries give the
> plural of "gentleman farmer" as "gentlemen farmers".
>
>
> --Ben Zimmer
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org