I observe that the word confidante has circa 3,2001 hits on The New York Times. And I also observe that on the same newspaper the word confident has ca. 148,000 hits.
3,200 seems to me a remarkable number. As is well known, confidante is used only for women, while confident is used both for men and women.
So the question is: Does this represent a persistent tendency to preserve sexism in language? Or are there cases in which confidante is preferable, for whatever reason?
1Searching from other countries could have different results.
