Language is constantly evolving, and navigating it can be difficult for a variety of reasons. If you’re not a native speaker, the grammar rules of a new language can be confusing. If you’re trying to master English, this can be doubly so thanks to gender-specific terms that don’t always exist in every language and are sometimes so obscure that even most native English speakers aren’t aware of them.
10. Nymphomania is specific to women
The word "nymphomaniac" isn't used very often in everyday conversation, but it's familiar to most people. Lars von Trier used it as the title of a film, and 50 Cent famously included the line "if you be a nymphomaniac, I'll be a nymphomaniac" in the song Candy Shop. But, alas, Mr. Cent misused the term because he failed to take into account the gender specificity of the term.
The definition of nymphomania only applies to women, meaning 50 Cent is not strictly speaking a nymphomaniac. The word, meaning nymph madness, was named after the mythological nymphs, who were female forest spirits. However, there is also a male version of the term, satyriasis. Satyrs, like nymphs, are also mythological beasts, but they are known for having the bottom half of a goat. Pan was the most famous of them, and they have a history of debauchery.
In modern parlance, we might use terms like hypersexuality or sex addiction to refer to these terms in a gender-neutral way.
9. Only brunette women
Marilyn Monroe played the title role in the 1953 film Gentlemen prefer blondes." in which she and her brunette friend played Jane Russell. At the end of the film, both the blonde and the brunette get married, so maybe that was a moot point. But you'll also notice that the word "blonde" is spelled with an "e" at the end. If the title referred to a man, that wouldn't be there. Blond without the "e" refers to a man's hair color. Even though the pronunciation is the same, the spelling is different. And it's not just blondes and blondes who are subject to gender treatment, but and brunettes .
Brunette with the suffix "ett" is the feminine form of the word. Technically, brown-haired could be call a brunette . The pronunciation, for example, blond versus blonde, remains the same, so unless you see it written down, you're unlikely to realize there's a difference. The word isn't used very often in English, and in fact, brown-haired seems to be the preferred way to refer to a brunette, while brunettes are still preferred by women.
8. Bluebeard is a male black widow.
Thanks to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, everyone knows the name Black Widow. If you didn't know the spider that goes by that name, you know Scarlett Johansson's character. But there's a third Black Widow that's also pretty well known, and that's the one that refers to a woman who seduces and marries a man and then kills him, usually to take his wealth.
The name very clearly refers to something feminine, but at some point a male version of the term was coined. In the arachnid or insect world, there aren't many males who kill their females the way spiders do, so the etymology of the word is a little more unusual. The term for a person who seduces, marries, and then kills their partners is called Bluebeard .
The name comes from a famous tale from the late 1600s about a man of the same name who has a room full of the corpses of his ex-wives. This image appears quite frequently in fiction, but perhaps not as frequently as the Black Widow.
7. There is a male version of the puma
A few years ago, the word "cougar" came into common usage as a term for an older woman interested in younger men. I think it was around in 2002 in Canada and spread from there. As luck would have it, there is also a term used to describe a man who behaves in a similar manner, meaning he is interested in seducing younger women. Such a person is called a rhinoceros.
The term is not as old as puma, but it has been around for several years. article from 2009 There is already an article on this topic in the Urban Dictionary. One could argue that the Urban Dictionary is hardly a scientific source, but gender-specific terms for older people who want to communicate with younger people are hardly scientific.
One of the reasons the term doesn't seem to have been as widespread as cougar is that while cougar is almost used as an honorific and evokes feline imagery that is usually something pleasing and feminine, the word rhino was chosen specifically because it refers to someone who is, quote, "both lustful and ugly."
6. Android only refers to robots that look like men
Androids have been a staple of science fiction for years. A robot may look like anything, but an android definitely looks human; it might even fool you. Data from "Star Trek" and "Bishop" from "Aliens" - these are androids. But Priss from the movie "Blade Runner" or TX from "Terminator 3" — not androids. Androids, although they look like humans, are also exclusively male. If robot woman can pass for human, then technically she is a gynoid. The awkward sounding word is probably why it is not used as often.
In real life, most of the robots we create are gender neutral, leaning towards being male. A few female robots have been developed, but they are often also associated with sex dolls Even in fiction, gynoids often exaggerate their sexuality to some extent.
5. A ballerina is a ballet dancer.
If you were to picture a ballerina in your head, chances are you would conjure up an image of a young woman in a tutu, dancing on her toes. The image of the classical ballerina hasn’t changed much over the years. There are even paintings from the 1600s that show dancers in costumes that wouldn’t look out of place today. One of the key differences was that women back then tended to wear much longer dresses. And that makes a difference. A ballerina, as we would use the term today, at all does not apply to to a male dancer ; It depends on the gender for dancers.
The term "ballet dancer" is perfectly acceptable, and is often used when referring to a male dancer. But strictly speaking, a female dancer is a ballerina, and a male dancer, following the conventions of how the Italian language handles gender differences, is ballerina .
4. There is a female version of phallic images
Sigmund Freud did a lot for the world of phallic symbols, whether he liked it or not. To this day, people sometimes actually wonder if a cigar is just a cigar. Anything that remotely resembles a penis can be considered a phallic symbol, and there have been many words in books and articles about whether it means anything. Everything from guns to cars to skyscrapers have been considered phallic at one time or another. Maybe there is some psychology behind it all. Or maybe something longer than it is wide is just a very common shape. Who knows?
Despite all the talk about phallic symbols, it is perhaps worth noting that while the term obviously refers to a particular gender image, it does have a downside. Yonic images are the female equivalent and refer to anything that can be compared to female genitalia.
The name comes from the Sanskrit word yoni, meaning womb. It was often associated with things like, like flowers , a metaphor that is still used today and which you can find in paintings stylized as female anatomy.
3. Dudette wasn't originally a girly guy
In the 1990s, the word “dude” was probably one of the most used slang terms in the Western world. Maybe it was because of surfer culture or ninja turtles , but it has survived to this day and is still thrown out very often. It's a simple term that basically just means "man", although you can play around with context and usage a bit.
Along with dude, there was a much less popular term used to refer to women, and that was doudette. Again, you can find this in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, when Michelangelo used the term in the 1990 film. Unfortunately, you should never count on an anthropomorphic turtle to be linguistically accurate, because doudette is not a female version of dude, or at least wasn't originally intended to be.
If you go back, a "dude" didn't refer to a turtle, a surfer, or even a cowboy on a dude ranch. In the 1800s, a dude was a " a picky person " So it was a man who was concerned about his appearance. The female version was known as Dudine , and this also carried over into the Wild West usage of the words dude and dudine.
2. Polygamy and polyamory are gender-neutral terms.
Over the last decade or so, there have been a number of articles online about people practicing polyamory. And of course, polygamy sometimes goes hand in hand with it. Polyamory is the practice of having multiple romantic partners, while polygamy involves multiple spouses. But both of these terms are gender-neutral and can refer to anyone. If you want to be more specific, there is gender term for both men and women who enter into relationships with multiple people.
Polyandrist - woman , having several husbands. The flip side is polygynist, which is a man with several wives. Usually when you hear about polygamists, it's technically polygynous, since men seem to do it a lot more often than women these days, although it was much more common in the past.
You can probably assume that if this is a person who has relationships with people of more than one gender, you can just fall back to polygamy or polyamory to make things easier to understand.
1. The Internet thinks Molly the cat
Tomcat is one of those terms that everyone seems to know, even if you can't remember where or when you first learned it. Any male cat walking around the neighborhood is generally considered a tomcat. It's such a common term that there's literally a cartoon about it: Tom and Jerry .
Kittens were called cats back in 1300 . Current usage seems to date back to the 1800s, with variations going back much further. But a tomcat is exclusively a male cat, and there is a term for females that is used much less frequently, at least on the Internet.
The cat's name, according to many websites, Molly . Of course, while one site says that a molly is only a spayed female, another site says that a molly is an unspayed female cat that has no kittens . And another site might say that this term is literally for any female cat .
No website seems to be able to explain the etymology of the name Molly in relation to cats. But it has become so common now that even if it is made up, everyone seems to agree with it.
Оставить Комментарий