Timeline for Female Devil (and other -ess problems)
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
21 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Feb 2, 2022 at 16:57 | comment | added | DLosc | I would expect to hear "athlete" rather than "sports person." | |
| Feb 1, 2022 at 22:06 | history | undeleted | gotube♦ | ||
| Feb 1, 2022 at 21:54 | history | edited | Mari-Lou A | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Feb 1, 2022 at 21:37 | history | deleted | gotube♦ | via Vote | |
| Feb 1, 2022 at 21:37 | comment | added | gotube♦ | As noted in several comments, this answer is tangential the OP's question, but does not state which is the correct way to denote a devil that is female. Just saying "devil" clearly does not satisfy the OP. So I'm deleting it. | |
| Feb 1, 2022 at 21:05 | comment | added | Mari-Lou A | @dan04 historically and traditionally the gender of God was never in question: "Our father who art in heaven..." “And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.” (NKJV) No sign of ambiguity there. | |
| Feb 1, 2022 at 18:07 | comment | added | Michael Kay | @RonJohn indeed there's a similarity, for example neither master/mistress or manager/manageress represent purely a gender difference, there are also different connotations in the usage of the terms. I think "manageress" was used largely for roles where many managers would be female (such as in a shop or restaurant), it wasn't used for any manager who happened to be a woman. | |
| Feb 1, 2022 at 18:02 | comment | added | dan04 | @Mari-LouA: Jesus is referenced as masculine due to having physically been male (e.g., getting circumcised). Whereas God and Satan being masculine is more of an arbitrary grammatical convention. | |
| Feb 1, 2022 at 8:44 | comment | added | Jontia | Head Teacher can also be abreviated to simply 'Head' as can chairperson to Chair. | |
| Feb 1, 2022 at 0:44 | comment | added | Loren Pechtel | @Mari-LouA In the Bible "Devil" refers to Satan, a singular entity and thus the gender is inherent. "devil", however, refers to beings of that nature and has no gender. | |
| Jan 31, 2022 at 21:13 | comment | added | RonJohn | @MichaelKay manager and managress (which I’ve never seem before) is no different than master and mistress. | |
| Jan 31, 2022 at 11:12 | history | edited | Mari-Lou A | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
modified as advised by commenters
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| Jan 31, 2022 at 10:07 | comment | added | Jontia | @RonJohn the question asks "what's the best option here". The answer says the best option is not to gender your professions. That this advice has changed since the 1950s isn't really relevant to what the best option is now. | |
| Jan 31, 2022 at 10:00 | comment | added | Michael Kay | I would add "manageress". I was reading a historical document about Lyons' tea shops, and it was assumed that each shop would be run by a "manageress". I don't know if they were all female, but I guess the vast majority were. There are other terms where the female form was dominant and there's no obvious male equivalent: seamstress, midwife, ... | |
| Jan 31, 2022 at 2:42 | comment | added | MarcInManhattan | I think that it's worth noting that while many people consider words like "waitress" and "chairwoman" old-fashioned, as you say, they are still in VERY common use. | |
| Jan 31, 2022 at 1:25 | history | edited | Mari-Lou A | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jan 30, 2022 at 15:02 | comment | added | Mari-Lou A | Well... @HaukeReddmann historically, at least in the Bible, it's always been implied that God, Jesus and Satan/Lucifer (i.e.the devil) are (were) masculine. But you can say of a woman, "She's the devil (in person)" It sounds perfectly fine to my ears. | |
| Jan 30, 2022 at 14:55 | comment | added | Hauke Reddmann | Now that's...well, amusing it is only for the satirists, but in Germany it runs exactly the other way round: any "untagged" form is seen as defaulting to "male" (even if grammar says otherwise) and thus has to be gendered with an artificial construction, which changes every second month because another minority protests they weren't included, with the dire effect that it makes their justified interests a laughing stock. I so wish that Germany could solve it the way you demonstrated, i.e. simply say "devil", with no implied gender. | |
| Jan 30, 2022 at 14:14 | history | edited | Mari-Lou A | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jan 30, 2022 at 14:00 | history | edited | Mari-Lou A | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jan 30, 2022 at 13:52 | history | answered | Mari-Lou A | CC BY-SA 4.0 |