actor, actress, star

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:50 AM -0600 6/16/11, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>Stupid as it all is, it makes "sense" - in the sense of "how media usage
>mavens think
>
>There's also "pornstress," which didn't turn up (too favorable?).

Or maybe it looks too much like it denotes a disorder requiring
specialized and expensive therapy.

>And would
>anybody say "porn performer"? (Too unfavorable?)
>

I was thinking of the sex-neutral (but also sex-positive) "pornist",
which does have a number of g-hits, although the intended meaning may
be hard to infer, to judge from an urbandictionary entry:

'a person who is racist about the origin of the man and or woman in a
porn video or against a type of porn such as anal,chubby,gang bang
etc.'

Not what is intended at all.

How about "pornicator? "  (Then we could argue about whether the
dedicated feminine "pornicatrix" is or isn't sexist.)

LH

>
>
>On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 10:35 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>  -----------------------
>>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>  Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
>>  Subject:      Re: actor, actress, star
>>
>>
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>  On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 9:57 AM, Jonathan Lighter
>>  <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>  > Semantically, WTF?
>>
>>  Precisely! Everyone knows that the proper, PC, unisex term is "porn
>>  _star_."
>>
>>  --
>>  -Wilson
>>  -----
>>  All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
>>  to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
>>  -Mark Twain
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>
>
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