gentleman

[Jonathan Lighter]

Can't say how long since I began to notice this use of "gentleman," but it's been a while.

  Isn't the (ultimate) source of the problem a vague feeling that "man" must be avoided?
  (Note too that "gentleman" contains more syllables.) Cf. the nearly universal TV talk-show practice of avoiding "boy" and "girl" unless the child is obviously a tiny infant.  "Young man" or "young woman" is almost always substituted.

  JL

Laurence Urdang <urdang at SBCGLOBAL.NET> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Laurence Urdang
Subject: gentleman
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I have noted in recent years the semantic change in gentleman: most notably is its use by the police to describe a murderous rapist or other felon, e.g., "We arrested the gentleman as he was about to attack a woman in the entryway."
I call your attention to it because I took particular exception to such usage that occurred the other day, on the TV news, when the chief archivist of the National Holocaust Museum, in looking over some photos in an album kept by an officer at Auschwitz, referred to one individual as "this gentleman": it was Dr. Mengele. Perhaps we shall soon be hearing about "that sweetie, Adolf Hitler," "dear old Heinrich Himmler," and other monsters of the Third Reich.
I sent the Museum an email expressing my strong objection to this semantic warping and the head of the Eastern Region phoned me today. One might think she'd apologize, but instead she made it clear that while she agreed with my criticism of the distortion, she was not apologizing because the quotation had not come from her lips. The (youngish) woman who had uttered the word did not mean anything evil or inconsiderate, and my point is to show how language change can bring about offensive usage that ought to be noted, commented on, and not tolerated.
So much for being an academically cool observer of the passing linguistic scene.
L. Urdang
P.S. Let us not labor the point any further with a barrage of emails either in criticism or in support.

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