…it’s my Supreme Court nominee. Of all the things for the left to get its panties in a new wad about.
Though this does remind me of a pet peeve of my own, and a much more egregious one (I just heard it again yesterday morning on the local news). The female anchor (not to pick on her, men do it, too) was describing some sort of brutal crime, after which she said that the police were still looking for the “gentleman” who perpetrated it.
Apparently, many people are no longer familiar with the meaning of the words “lady” and “gentleman” (it just occurs to me that people in show business compliment their audiences by addressing them as “ladies and gentlemen” — do they say that at WWE events? Wishing to see such an exhibition doesn’t seem very ladylike…). They are not synonyms for (respectively) “woman” and “man.” They are describing a particular sort of woman or man. As far as I know, and from all I’ve heard about her public conduct (and ignoring rumors about her private life, about which I’m indifferent), Elena Kagan is a lady. And the guy the news reporter was describing was no gentleman.
The word “lady” has multiple connotations. Consider: “My old lady”, “She’s a bag lady”, (a Capone-era gangster speaking: “Now listen here lady, I don’t want no trouble”), “lady of the night”, “cleaning lady”…
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady#General_usage:_social_class
Those aren’t connotations. And with the exception of the lady of the night (and perhaps the bag lady) they don’t actually preclude the person so named from being a lady. I mean, it’s better to be called a bag lady than a bag bimbo. And a cleaning lady could very well be a lady. If not, “cleaning woman” works. But you’re right in the sense that the symmetry isn’t quite there. We don’t talk about the furnace-repair gentleman. Or the repogentleman. Well, OK, maybe the clueless newscasters do.
It denotes just what you think it does, but it can connote all sorts of things, including “lower class”.
See the wikipedia article (and the web is full of discussions about this.)
It also can connote age: one can have a girlfriend who is 20 or 30 years old, but if one has a “lady friend”, she is likely to be quite a bit older.
There is also the perennial battle over prescriptivism vs descriptivism in language — you’re a prescriptivist (as are many engineers and computer scientists) as am I, usually, but there is a valid argument for descriptivism, which you probably don’t want to acknowledge. The short version: word meanings changes, so people aren’t necessarily wrong when they use newer meanings.
“I don’t think it was a good choice of words,” says Midge Wilson, a DePaul professor who teaches psychology of women courses. ” ‘Lady’ has a very restricted meaning — someone who conforms to certain societal expectations. It puts a woman on a pedestal and restricts her behavior to be polite and nonthreatening. An adult ‘good girl.’ “
Yeah, the People would prefer that she interpret the US Constitution and the laws of the United States, and not those of the UN. We would also appreciate that when she’s on the bench, she doesn’t piss on the marble and show her breasts for beads or closing arguments. In general, being an adult good girl is a good idea.
I suspect if she was nominated by President Bush, and thought that the appropriate punishment for terrorist was to sodomize them prior to personally cutting their heads off, people would be saying she wasn’t a lady. So yes, we want some restrictions.
Why is it that some people seem to jump immediately to negative connotations and negative arguments and attempt to discuss semantics, when the people on the “other side” of the non-argument had no such intention in mind? (See also: race-baiting, I suppose)
Some (and not me, because I’m not that petty and passive-aggressive, nor a shrink [oops, was THAT a negatively-connoted word, too?]) might say that it reveals one’s own insecurities or propensities to think such negative thoughts.
Of course, after all of the “Kevin James in drag” commentary (which, honestly, is a sleight to Kevin James), my first response to the title of this post was “She’s a man, baby!” a la Austin Powers. And not just because of the Kevin James in drag comments, either, but more because my brain works in movie quotes.
Just because there are pejorative phrases that contain the word “lady,” that doesn’t make the word itself a pejorative. What we have here with the proggnuts’ reaction is a case of the Tyranny of the Malicious Interpreter.
I’ll admit to just a touch of schadenfreude that this time the target of the malice is none other than President Obama, but aside from that he’s right and the proggnuts are wrong.
The short version: word meanings changes, so people aren’t necessarily wrong when they use newer meanings.
When you lose the meaning of the word “gentleman,” and simply use it as a synonym for “man,” the word becomes useless.
I agree that Obama’s usage was fine. My earlier comments were for Rand the language maven, not Rand the political commentator, and were not about this particular incident.
I agree that Obama’s usage was fine. My earlier comments were for Rand the language maven, not Rand the political commentator, and were not about this particular incident.
Bob (short) – Obama 1 Rand 0 plus -1 to Rand for moving out of the box Bob put you in.
[presses button like a game show contestant]
Reflexive Gramscianism and Alinsky debate tactics which have set the tone of public debate since the 60’s?
Leland, you’re nuts. I like Rand’s commentary on language. I just disagree with him on the prescriptivist vs descriptivist spectrum. Although I lean heavily toward prescriptivism, Rand goes farther than me.
Rand: there are many redundant words in the English language. Often times, they once had different meanings, but the distinction got blurred. Usually, they are retain differing atmospherics/connotations, at least for a few generations.
Automobile vs car –> do you suppose “automobile” will be dropped? Automotive is a more useful word than automobile. Automobile seems useful only for poetry/lyrics (when you need a rhyme or a couple more sylllables.)
Strange, weird, unusual, peculiar, abnormal –>In another less redundant language, there might only be one word to express this idea. And that word might also mean “odd”, which might retain its primary mathematical meaning as well. And another less redundant language wouldn’t have gone and invented still more slang words, like “kooky”, to further fill up the niche. Nor would it have still more synonyms, like “eccentric”, which have shades of meaning which aren’t particularly necessary, but make life fun.
When you lose the meaning of the word “gentleman,” and simply use it as a synonym for “man,” the word becomes useless.
No matter how the language changes, “gentleman” will never be an exact synonym for “man”, if only because it has three times the syllables. Anyone trying to use it interchangeably for “man” is at least also revealing that they like to hear themselves talk and that they are trying (but failing) to sound more refined.
See also “utilize” vs. “use” (to pick an example of which I’ve been guilty…)
Wasn’t this a discussion about the formal use of the word “lady” and the usage of “gentlemen”. When did it become a discussion of who “Bob” thinks is right or wrong? Does anyone care for “Bob” scoring the discussion? Should we drop Rand’s discussion about the abuse of the word “gentlemen” as a discriptor of violent men? Should we instead discuss that “Car” is short for “Carriage” and complain about its common english use rather than the more french “automobile” preferred by “Bob”? I mean, how dare people use “odd” to describe people, when it is a mathematical term? Shall we not point out that “odd” was used to describe things out of place before it became a mathematical term to describe numbers not divisible by 2?
Would the gentleman prefer to utilize the reading room accommodations?