Grammar Girl Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing

Do words like 'mandate' and 'cockamamie' come from words for men? Grammatical doppelgangers. A pair of teeth.

Episode Summary

1014. We debunk misconceptions about gendered language, tracing the etymology of words like "cockamamie" and "gynecology." We also look at the flexibility of English grammar, examining how common words like "that" and "up" can function as different parts of speech in various contexts.

Episode Notes

1014. This week, we debunk misconceptions about gendered language, tracing the etymology of words like "cockamamie" and "gynecology." We also look at the flexibility of English grammar, examining how common words like "that" and "up" can function as different parts of speech in various contexts.

The "gendered words" segment was written by Samantha Enslen, who runs Dragonfly Editorial. You can find her at dragonflyeditorial.com.

The "grammar leaks" segment was written by Edwin Battistella, who taught linguistics and writing at Southern Oregon University in Ashland, where he served as a dean and as interim provost. His books include Bad Language: Are Some Words Better than Others?, Sorry About That: The Language of Public Apology, and Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels: Insulting the President, from Washington to Trump. It originally appeared on the OUP blog and is included here with permission.

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References for the "gendered language" segment:

Becker, Thomas. Autohyponymy: Implicature in Lexical Semantics, Word Formation, and Grammar. Journal of Germanic Linguistics 14(02):10 –136, June 2002.

Forster, Tim. Are Gendered Words like “Mankind” Inherently Sexist? Babbel.com, March 1, 2021. Accessed August 7, 2024.

Merriam-Webster Online. www.merriam-webster.com.

Oxford English Dictionary. Oed.com. Available by subscription.

Online Etymology Dictionary. https://www.etymonline.com/word/menagerie

Shariatmadari, David. Eight words that reveal the sexism at the heart of the English language. The Guardian, January 27, 2016. Accessed August 7, 2024.

Episode Transcription

Grammar Girl here. I’m Mignon Fogarty, your friendly guide to the English language. We talk about writing, history, rules, and other cool stuff. Today, we're going to talk about words that sound gendered, but aren't. And then we'll talk about why all grammars leak.

8 Words that Sound Gendered, but Aren’t

by Samantha Enslen

Since the 1970s, the English language has been evolving to include more gender-inclusive terms.

For example, "chairman" has become "chairperson." "Fireman" has become "firefighter," and "policeman," "police officer." When we're on an airplane, we're cared for by flight attendants, not by stewardesses. Our letters are delivered by a "mail carrier," not a "mailman." And we usually refer to all of humanity as "humankind," not "mankind."

I think we can all agree that these changes are positive! But we also know there is such a thing as too much of a good thing.

And we started to wonder: are there words that might seem gendered, but actually aren't? We looked at words starting with the prefixes "man-" and "cock-," signifying male, and "gyn-," signifying female. Here's what we found.

The meaning of the root word 'man'

For starters, the word “man” can be traced back to Germanic dialects like Old Saxon, spoken between the 8th and 12th centuries AD. Back then, "man"—spelled M-A-N-N—was a more neutral term. It referred to people in general and also to just males.

Over time, its meaning evolved, and today “man” almost exclusively refers just males.

But not every word that starts with “man” comes from this ancient German root!

Manage

For example, the words “manage” and “manager” seem like perfect candidates to be gendered terms. They start with “man,” and they have to do with bossing people around.

But — surprise! — they’re not gendered. These words don’t come from the Germanic word “mann.” Instead, they come from the circa-1300 Italian word “maneggiare,” meaning to exercise a horse. They’re also related to the Middle French word “mesnage,” meaning to arrange with care. The same root gives us the word "menagerie," meaning a collection of wild animals kept in captivity, which doesn't always feel that far off from office life.

To be fair, the root word within “maneggiare” is “manus,” meaning “hand.” And in classical Latin, the word “manus” did convey the power of a husband over a wife. But that meaning fell out of use with the fall of the Roman Empire, way back in 476 AD.

Manufacture

The word “manufacture” is also built on the Latin word “manus,” meaning “hand.” In this case, it's paired with the Middle French word “facture,” which referred to how well a painting was executed. Over time, the sense of something being “hand-painted” evolved to being “hand-made.” In other words, “manu-factured.”

Manipulate

“Manipulate” also didn’t come from the Germanic “mann.” It was borrowed from French. In the 17th century — the time of the Scientific Revolution — “manipulation” referred to a method of digging silver ore. That word in turn came from the French “manipule,” meaning a handful. At the time, that was a unit of measure used by pharmacists!

And the derivation of “manipule”? That came from taking the Latin word “manus” and adding “plere,” meaning “to fill.” A mani-pule was literally a hand-ful.

By the 1800s, the meaning of “manipulate” had broadened to include managing anything skillfully, especially with your hands. It soon developed a darker meaning: to control someone using subtle, insidious means.

Mandate

"Mandate" is another word that sounds like it could be gendered. And in past history, most authoritative commands probably did come from guys!

But “mandate” actually comes from the Latin “mandātum.” That meant a command, instruction, or imperial directive. The related word “mandatory,” meaning obligatory, or required by law or rule, comes from the Latin “mandatorius,” the adjective form of “mandātum.” And like the other words we've talked about, this root probably goes back to the word for "hand."

'Cock' usually signifies 'male,' but it doesn’t always

Next, we looked at various words that contain the word “cock.” Since the earliest days of Old English, in the first centuries AD, “cock” meant a male domestic chicken. A “cockerel” was a young male chicken. And those words continue with just the same meaning today.

But as with “man,” not all such words signify maleness.

Cockamamie and coldcock

The term “cockamamie” comes from the French word “décalcomanie,” a method of transferring designs from specially prepared paper onto glass. According to one newspaper, decalomani-ing household objects became a “virulent craze” in the 1860s. It was such a craze, apparently, that the word transmuted into “cockamamie,” meaning ridiculous or absurd.

Similarly, “cold-cock,” meaning to knock unconscious, comes from an entirely different meaning of “cock”: to bend or tilt the body at an angle. “Cockeyed,” meaning askew or crooked, draws from this same meaning, as does “cockup,” meaning a mistake or a blunder.

Cockpit and cocktail

However, some words do refer back to the root word meaning a male chicken! For example, “cockpit,” meaning the place in an airplane a pilot sit, is a compound word. Its most literal sense is a hole in the ground (a pit) for a guy chicken (a cock)! And most pilots used to be guys.

“Cocktail,” another compound, refers to the tail of a male chicken. Its meaning as a mixed drink is a bit fuzzy.

Apparently, horses with docked tails that stuck up in the air were described as “cocktailed”—in other words, their tails stuck up like a chicken’s. Over time, “cocktailed” came to refer to a non-thoroughbred horse; one of mixed breed. This sense of mixed breed extended to mixed drinks … if you believe the story.

'Gyn-' words all signify female

To wrap up, we took a quick look at words that contain G-Y-N-, like "gynecology" and "misogyny." They’re derived from the ancient Greek “gynaeco,” meaning "woman" or "female."

Try as we might, we couldn’t find any G-Y-N words that didn’t signify femaleness! “Gynecology” refers to the medical care of women’s reproductive systems. “Gynoecium” refers to the female parts of a flower. There’s even “epigynum,” meaning the external genital structure of a female spider! I didn’t know there was a word for that!

Long story short, we’ve come a long way in crafting a more gender-inclusive language. I think we can all agree that “firefighter” and “police officer” are fine professional titles. Moreover, we needn’t worry about erasing other words like “manage” or “mandate,” that might seem gendered but aren’t.

With that research done, I think I’ll make a cockamamie plan to have a cocktail, and mandate that all around me enjoy their day as well!

That segment was written by Samantha Enslen who runs Dragonfly Editorial. You can find her at dragonflyeditorial.com

This next segment is by Edwin Battistella.

All grammars leak

by Edwin Battistella

Anthropologist Edward Sapir once wrote, "unfortunately, or luckily, no language is tyrannically consistent. All grammars leak." Sapir was talking about the irregularities of language. For me, this leakiness is especially evident in what I think of as doppelgrammar words.

Many of our most common words have come to serve more than a single grammatical role, so a word serving one part of speech will often have a homonym — a grammatical doppelganger — that serves as a different part of speech. Often this arises from what is called functional shift, when we take a noun and make it into a verb as in "to adult" or "to gym." This shiftiness makes it hard, and perhaps impossible, to think of a word as having just one categorization.

Here’s an example. Recently, a friend told me that her daughter’s teacher had told her to never use the word "that." She wondered if the advice was legit.

It depends, I said, which "that" we are talking about. This humble four-letter word can serve as a pronoun, adjective, conjunction, or even an adverb. When we say, "Hand me that," the word is functioning as a demonstrative pronoun, referring to something oriented away from the speaker (as opposed to "this"). But if we say, "hand me that book," it is functioning as an adjective, though again indicating orientation. If we say, "Have you seen the person that was just here?" the word is a pronoun again, a relative pronoun linking the noun "person" to the clause "that was just here." Whew.

"That" can also be a straight up subordinating conjunction introducing a clause functioning as a noun: "I told you that I would be right back." This "that" is the one that writers often cut to make prose move along more quickly: "I told you I would be right back" is often preferred on grounds of conciseness. This is what my friends’ daughter’s teacher was talking about. And, last but not least, "that" can even be an intensifying adverb, as in "yes, it is that complicated."

Now, we might quibble about these characterizations — perhaps the adjective "that" and the demonstrative pronoun "that" are related, "Hand me that" being a reduced form of "Hand me that book." But the larger point is pretty clear: our simplest words serve more than a single function. Grammar leaks, and words have doppelgangers.

"That" is not the only word that does double (or triple or quadruple) duty. The words "have," "be," and "do," for example can be auxiliary verbs (you may know these as "helping" verbs because they "help the main verb") or the main verbs themselves. In "I have just arrived," the word "have" helps the main verb ("arrived"), but in "I have a question," "have" is the main verb.

Sometimes words are so common that we don’t even think to question their status. Take the word "up." It’s a preposition, right? "I walked up the block for a cup of coffee." But "up" can also be an adverb as in "He jumped up." Or it can be part of a compound verb: "We fixed up the house" or "She wrote up the report." "Up" can even be used as an adjective or verb: "It was an up day for the markets," or "The university has upped tuition again." The stereotypical characterization of "up" as a preposition doesn’t do justice to its flexibility.

The flexibility and homonymy of English words is pervasive: words like "yesterday," "today," and "tomorrow" can be nouns or adverbs. Compare "Tomorrow is another day," with "I’ll finish the work tomorrow." The word "who" can be an interrogative pronoun ("Who left?") or a relative one ("I saw the person who you mentioned"). "Before" and "after" can be prepositions or subordinating conjunctions: "I left after class," or "I left after I saw them." "Well" can be an interjection or an adverb, as in "Well, I never would have believed that!" and "The old car runs well." And of course, "you" and "they" can be singular or plural pronouns.

So if you expect a word to have a unique meaning or function, you are likely to be disappointed. Words are pressed into service for new functions all the time, and the list of such grammatical doubles goes on and on.

Sometimes, though, the status of a word becomes a matter of minor controversy. A librarian I know was called out on social media for using "fun" as an adjective ("a fun event"). "As a librarian, you should know better," her on-line scolder remarked. Well, "fun" has been an adjective for quite some time. Others get annoyed about the shift of a "super" from adjective status to intensifying adverb (as in "She was super smart").

And a few years ago, the media was abuzz with concerns about the word "because" being used as a preposition (as in "because reasons" or "because science") rather than sticking to its more traditional role as a subordinating conjunction ("because language changes"). People who thought the usage was an abomination when they first heard it were using it regularly within a few weeks, at first ironically and then routinely. And Oxford Dictionaries lists these uses of "because," "super," and "fun," tagging them—for now—as informal.

So before we get too judgmental about nouns being used as verbs, or adjectives being used as nouns or as adverbs, let’s take a moment to appreciate the flexibility of the parts of speech. As Edward Sapir put it, the multiplicity of ways in which we express ourselves may be a "welcome luxuriance" or "an unavoidable and traditional predicament." Which it is may depend on our temperament.

That segment was written by Edwin L. Battistella, who taught linguistics and writing at Southern Oregon University in Ashland, where he served as a dean and as interim provost. His books include Bad Language: Are Some Words Better than Others?, Sorry About That: The Language of Public Apology, and Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels: Insulting the President, from Washington to Trump. It originally appeared on the OUP blog and is included here with permission.

Familect

Finally, I have a familect story.

Hi Grammar Girl, thanks for your great podcast. This is Kieran from Sydney, Australia. I grew up as one of five children.

Here is our famillect.

When the grandchildren were all young, Mum and Dad would invite all of us over for weekend dinner. Mum and Dad, their five children and five spouses, and the nine grandchildren for a total of 21 of us at the family home. It could get quite chaotic. Mum would be making her wonderful roast dinner, and the grandchildren would be running around screaming.

Eventually Mum would get to a rest point in meal prep and announce, "It's time for an aperitif." By this she meant a brandy and lemonade. Dad ran the bar, so the grandchildren would rush into the living room and tell him, "Papa, Papa, Nana needs a pair of teeth."

To this day, when my siblings or the grandchildren who are now all grown up, some with children of their own, plan to get together with food and alcohol, it is always listed on the family calendar as, for example, 2 p.m. Saturday the 10th at Mum and Dad's, a pair of teeth.

Thanks again Grandma Girl for allowing us to share.

Thanks, Kiernan. That's adorable. I feel like that one would make a nice cartoon too.

Grammar Girl is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to Morgan Christianson in advertising, Brannan Goetschius, director of podcasts; Dan Feierabend in audio; Davina Tomlin and Nat Hoopes in marketing; and Holly Hutchings in digital operations who loves the smell of lemon cake because it reminds her of her grandma.

Be sure to check in on Thursday because I have a fabulous interview for you: I talked with the editors of the new edition of the Chicago Manual of Style! They only update the book once every seven years, so there was a lot to talk about.