very minor note on "lady"

[Jonathan Lighter]

I recall "young lady!" as a parental expression of displeasure from the '50s
and, unless I'm really out of it, from old movies at least as far back as
the early '30s. (I'd bet GB can take it back to the 19th C. at least.)
Though it exists, the parallel use of "young woman" has always been
much less frequent AFAIK.  ("Young man!" is the male equivalent, never
"young gentleman!")

"Lady" in polite direct address had similar working-class overtones in NYC
in the '50s. "Woman" in that sense sounds quite impossibly weird.

NYC rest rooms in the '50s were customarily adorned with plaques reading
"Ladies" and "Gentlemen" (not "Gents" in my experience).

"The lady at the store" (any adult female) sounds absolutely unremarkable to
me except that, personally, I'd still say "woman."
I've run all these "lady" comments past my wife, whose NYC background is
similar. She's in complete agreement. Her take: "If you were starting a
story about someone you'd seen on the bus, you'd say [in NYC, at least in
the past] either 'The woman on the bus' or 'The lady on the bus.'  But I
don't think anyone here would say 'The woman....'"

JL

On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 5:05 PM, victor steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       victor steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: very minor note on "lady"
>
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>
> 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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