(a) blond(e)

[Baker, John]

        There seem to be people who think that blonde is the noun and
blond is the adjective.  Look at these Google hits:

        21,700  "she has blonde hair"
        10,100  "she has blond hair"

        So the adjectival form is only mildly sex-linked for women.  Now
look at the noun forms:

        14,500  "she's a blonde"
           333  "she's a blond"

        For some reason, a woman can have "blond hair" but is unlikely
to be referred to as a "blond."

John Baker


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
Of Laurence Horn
Sent: Monday, November 06, 2006 11:13 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: (a) blond(e)

At 7:44 AM -0800 11/6/06, Jonathan Lighter wrote [re _blond_/_blonde_]:
>That's the distinction I was taught in Junior High.
>
>   Since then it has been condemned as sexist to use the "e" form for
>women, though it could be interpreted as ignorant and linguistically
>insensitive not to. Like saying "NeanderTHal."

I think the more frequent complaint is the standard use of the nominal
"a blonde", given the role of nouns as categorizers/pigeon-holers (cf.
Bolinger, Wierzbicka, and our discussion of this tendency buried in the
yellowing archives), the claim that categorizing individuals in terms of
appearance is demeaning, and the fact that we're much more likely to do
this with women than men ("she's a blonde": 14,400 google hits/"he's a
blond(e)": 485).  Nor is this a fact about blond(e)s per se, as
sometimes argued:  cf. "she's a brunette" vs. "he's a brunet(te)".

LH

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