Quiz: Chairman or chairwoman?

[Jonathan Lighter]

How do we know that "chairman" is gender-specific ? If it is, hasn't it become so only since the introduction of "chairwoman" ?

  JL

"Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Joel S. Berson"
Subject: Quiz: Chairman or chairwoman?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

At 11/2/2006 04:06 PM, Page Stephens wrote:
>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..
>...
>The men got there first ...

A short quiz (do NOT consult your local OED, or other historical dictionary).

Which came first, chairman or chairwoman?

By how many decades?

How many centuries later did chair arrive? (For the occupier, not
the place he sat.)

Which came first, chairwoman or chair?

Joel

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



---------------------------------
Get your email and see which of your friends are online - Right on the  new Yahoo.com

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