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

[FRITZ JUENGLING]

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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