very minor note on "lady"

[victor steinbok]

Don't know much about locales--I'm new to this game, so I have not
been following regional variations until very recently. But, for me,
"lady" is associated with several levels:

1) A friend who grew up in California and is now in late 40s, usually
addresses his daughters as "young lady", especially when with
opprobrium. I've heard this used in other situations as well, although
this is the only one I can localize
2) Films and TV shows about NYC tend to include comments by the "lower
classes" of the type, "Hey, lady! Is that a hat or a fruit basket?"
This is also in frequent use by NYPD characters on Law&Order, but not
by prosecutors or characters in the Criminal Intent sub-series. I
don't recall if NYPD Blue had similar distinctions.
3) Various eating establishments, particularly BBQ joints attempting
to sound authentic, using "Ladies" and "Gents" on bathroom doors.
4) Obnoxious, usually fictional comments of the type, "She's no lady!"
5) A point of formal address or title, particularly parallel to "Sir".
6) Some regional forms of polite address or ID--such as mentioning
"the lady at the store", or some such. I have no idea if this extends
to general conversation or is just a matter of politeness for *men*,
especially younger men, to address adult members of the opposite sex.
I'll take Jon's word for it that it's broader use than what I had
noticed on occasion.

My experience with Tennessee is limited to two 6-hour stints at an
airport. And, other than driving on I-95 from Boston to Miami, I have
not experiences "The South", except Northern Virginia (mostly near DC)
and Research-Triangle and Rocky Mount areas in North Carolina--and my
memory on regional variations there is at best fuzzy.

On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 4:44 PM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> This information is probably available elsewhere, but it seems worth
> mentioning. It will seem trivial to some.
>
> OED finds it very difficult - understandably - to discriminate between
> printed exx. of the bland _lady_ 'woman' and the earlier, more dignified
> usage.
>
> When I was a lad in NYC in the 1950s "lady" and "woman" were generally
> interchangeable (except, of course,
> in those special situations when one might say something like, "a perfect
> lady" or "very ladylike," etc.). A girl could grow up to be either a "lady"
> or a "woman": in that context the words were nearly as synonymous as "gorse"
> and "furze." Outside of direct address, my impression is that actual adults
> were far more likely to say "woman" than "lady," but young
> whippersnappers said both (outside of direct address) with more or less
> equal frequency.
>
> However, when I arrived in Knoxville in 1974, I was amazed at how *rarely*
> undergraduates used the word "woman," either in speech or in writing. It was
> very noticeable. Every adult female was by default a "lady," in distinctive
> and complementary counterbalance to a "man" (except when specifically
> complementary to a "gentleman"). (Cf., e.g., "lunch lady"; "men and ladies"
> was not an infrequent collocation; I'm tempted to suggest that the frozen
> phrase "men and women" was almost the *only* time the word "woman" was ever
> used, but that's probably an exaggeration). I also soon noticed that even
> people well over 30 and 40 (back then) tended to replace "woman" with
> "lady."
>
> I suppose I may be overlooking some subtleties in both locales, but the
> point is generally valid.
>
> And the point of this note is that there are obvious, occasionally even
> jarring, semantic features whose slow development and spread simply
> resist adequate documentation.  That is certainly exemplified in OED's
> treatment of "lady."
>
> JL

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