2022-03-21 ศัพท์ น่าสับสน - Set – F

2022-03-21

ศัพท์ น่าสับสน - Set – F – female & woman

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Dictionary.com:

ออกเสียงfemale = “FEE-meyl”

ออกเสียง woman = “WOOM-uhn”

Dictionary of Problem Words and Expressions:

Female

Current usage restrictsfemale

to designations of sex in scientific contexts.

If female is considered objectionable in other contexts,

and it is, we lack a word

to express “female human being of whatever age.”

Dictionary.com:

SYNONYM STUDY FOR FEMALE

Female, Feminine, Effeminate

are adjectives that describe women and girls

or attributes and conduct culturally ascribed to them.

Female, which is applied to plants and animals

as well as to human beings,

is a biological or physiological descriptor,

classifying individuals on the basis

of their potential or actual ability

to produce offspring in bisexual reproduction.

It contrasts with male in all uses:

her oldest female relative; the female parts of the flower.

Feminine refers essentially

to qualities or behaviors deemed by a culture or society

to be especially appropriate to or ideally

associated with women and girls.

In American and Western European culture,

these have traditionally included features

such as delicacy, gentleness, gracefulness, and patience:

to dance with feminine grace;

a feminine sensitivity to moods.

Feminine is also, less frequently, used

to refer to physical features:

a lovely feminine figure;

small, feminine hands.

Effeminate is most often applied derogatorily to men or boys,

suggesting that they have character or behavior traits

culturally believed to be appropriate

to women and girls rather than to men:

an effeminate horror of rough play; an effeminate speaking style.

Dictionary.com:

SYNONYM STUDY FOR WOMAN

Woman, Female,

lady are nouns referring to an adult female human being,

one paradigm of gender and biological sex

for adult human beings.

Woman is the general term.

It is neutral, lacking either favorable or unfavorable implication,

and is the most commonly used of the three:

a wealthy woman;

a woman of strong character, of unbridled appetites.

In scientific, statistical, and other objective use,

female is the neutral contrastive term

to male and may apply to plants and animals also:

104 females to every 100 males;

Among lions, the female is the chief hunter.

Female is sometimes used in disparaging contexts:

a gossipy female;

a conniving female.

Lady meaning “refined, polite woman”

is a term of approval or praise:

a real lady in all things;

to behave like a lady.

When used as a form of address,

lady may be polite or neutral in tone:

Ladies, did you hear about the new brunch

menu with bottomless mimosas?

However, in the singular

it is often perceived as rude:

Hey, lady, I don’t have all day.

Dictionary.com:

USAGE NOTE FOR WOMAN

Although formerly

woman was sometimes regarded as demeaning

and lady was the term of courtesy,

woman is the designation preferred

by most modern female adults:

League of Women Voters;

American Association of University Women.

Woman is the standard feminine parallel to man.

As a modifier of a plural noun, woman, like man,

is exceptional in that the plural form women is used:

women athletes;

women students.

The use of lady as a term of courtesy has diminished

somewhat in recent years ( the lady of the house ),

although it still survives

in a few set phrases (ladies' room; Ladies' Day ).

Lady is also used, but decreasingly, as a term of reference

for women engaged in occupations

considered by some to be menial or routine:

cleaning lady;

saleslady.

See also chairperson, -man, -person.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

Female

Did you know?

In the 14th century, female appeared in English

with such spellings as femel, femelle, and female.

The word comes from the Latin femella,

meaning “young woman, girl,”

which in turn is based on femina, meaning “woman.”

In English, the similarity in form and sound

between the words female and male

led people to use only the female spelling.

This closeness also led to the belief that

female comes from or is somehow related to male.

However, apart from the influence of male

on the modern spelling of female,

there is no link between the origins of the two words.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

Using 'Lady,' 'Woman,' and 'Female' to Modify Nouns

'Female' doctor?

'Lady' lawyer?

'Woman' politician?

Are any of these not offensive?

Here at Merriam-Webster,

we have a number of women editors.

Or is it female editors? Certainly not lady editors, right?

There's currently a split between

the use of 'woman' and 'female' as modifiers,

with some preferring one over the other.

If you're stuck, consider that

there's rarely a need to say something

like 'female surgeon';

most of the time, 'surgeon' works just fine.

Gendered modifiers like female, woman, and lady

are a thorny issue in English usage.

All three words began life as nouns,

with woman and lady showing up very early in the language,

and female showing up in the 1300s.

Lady was used initially as a form of address

for a woman who had run of a household

or who had charge over servants,

and late came to refer to a woman who held a high rank.

Woman has retained its original meaning,

which is now almost 1400 years old:

“an adult female human being.”

Female first referred to a woman or girl,

but within about a hundred years of its appearance,

it was also being used of animals

(“Byrdes that ben femalles may not abyde there,” —The Myrrour of the Worlde, 1481).

Unlike lady and woman, however,

female is also a full-fledged adjective,

and the adjectival use has historically

been more clinical and biological than not

(as in, “the female plant” or Alexander Pope’s “goats of female kind”).

There was remarkably little fussing over any of these words.

Until the end of the 1800s, that is.

The arguments began with the bare nouns:

was it appropriate to call a group of women females?

Are all women ladies?

Can you call a group of female human beings of various ages females

or should you go with ladies or women?

Though advice varied,

it was generally agreed by the beginning of the 20th century

that female was a disparaging term as it made no differentiation

between humans and animals

(this in spite of the fact that female was, in previous centuries,

actually preferred to woman and lady);

lady was a fine and polite word to describe

a woman of excellent social refinement or breeding

(in spite of the fact that it was, at that point in time,

often used in informal print and speech

to refer specifically to women who happened to have jobs

that would benefit from being tagged as above their station,

as with cleaning lady and saleslady);

and woman was the preferred term

to refer to an adult woman (which had always been the case).

All three nouns had been used attributively

(that is, before a noun in order to modify it)

before—woman,

in fact, had been used attributively back to the 14th century.

Newspapers from the 1800s are surprisingly populated

with lady doctors,

female lawyers, and

women scientists.

And these uses went largely unremarked upon until the 20th century.

The first scholar to critically examine

the attributive uses of female, woman, and lady was Henry Fowler,

author of the 1926 Dictionary of Modern English Usage,

and while his conclusions are commonsensical,

his manner of expressing himself grates.

In a section called “Feminine designations,”

he claims that

women who argue against the use of gendered words

ending in -ess, like authoress and poetress,

are being, in short, whiny and illogical,

and that since the English language is flexible enough to allow

these designations, we had better let it.

There is one interesting note in his jeremiad, however:

With the coming extension

of women’s vocations, feminine vocation

-words are a special need of the future;

everyone knows the inconvenience of being

uncertain whether a doctor is a man or a woman;...

For all his late Victorian bluster, Fowler was prescient in one regard:

most of our current uses of gendered modifiers are vocation-related

(lady doctor, woman senator, female restaurateur).

And he has some usage guidance on that score.

Regarding lady, he writes:

Lady prefixed to names of vocations as a mark of sex

(lady doctor, author, clerk, &c.) is a cumbrous substitution

for a feminine designation,

which should be preferred when it exists or can be made;

in default of that,

woman or female would be better than lady...

But Fowler had some further thoughts on female and woman.

After noting that the noun female had become “reasonably resented”

as mostly a biological designation, he goes on to say that

It is not reasonable

to extend this resentment to the adjective use of female;

but it is the mistaken extension

which probably accounts for the apparent avoidance of

the natural phrase female suffrage &

the use of the clumsy woman suffrage instead.

His preference for female over woman

seems to be grammatical in nature:

he notes that

shoehorning woman (a noun) into an adjective’s role

is “mere perversity”

when there’s a perfectly good adjective to use instead: female.

Fowler set the tone for the conversation

that would take off in the latter part of the 20th century.

Linguists and scholars who studied gendered language

have, over decades, formulated the general rule

we currently function under.

Lady as a modifier is disparaging at best and should be avoided:

...if, in a particular sentence, both woman and lady might be used,

the use of the latter tends to trivialize the subject matter under discussion, often subtly ridiculing the woman involved.
— Robin Tolmach Lakoff, Language and Woman’s Place: Text and Commentaries, 1975

When choosing between female and woman as modifiers,

the usage advice is split. Some advocate for woman:

Although it is generally

preferable to use woman or women as adjectives...

but allow that female is also an adequate choice:

... there will be times when female seems more appropriate.

Use it, however, only when you would use male in a similar situation

or when it is necessary for clarification;

sex-specific adjectives are often gratuitous and belittling...
— Rosalie Maggio, The bias-free word finder:

a dictionary of nondiscriminatory language, 1992

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language:

fe′male′ness n.

Usage Note:

Perhaps because the use of female to modify a noun for a professional,

as in female doctor, can seem derogatory

if it seemsto imply that professionals are male by default,

some writers use woman or women as modifiers

when identifying the sex of the referent is necessary.

Despite this tendency, in our 2016 survey,

overwhelming majorities of the Usage Panel (97 percent)

found the use of both female and male to be acceptable

in the sentences

This book is written by a ______ author and This anthology features ______ authors.

In contrast, the Panelists overwhelmingly rejected

man author (92 percent),

man authors (96 percent), and

men authors (81 percent).

Woman authors was a bit less unpopular

(it was rejected by 74 percent of the panel),

but it was rejected largely because of the clash between

the singular modifier and plural noun,

not because woman was being used as a modifier.

The Panel was more favorable toward woman author,

which was accepted by 43 percent of Panelists,

and women authors, which was accepted by 64 percent,

the only phrase

among the batch surveyed that received a majority acceptance.

Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary:

fe′male•ness, n.

syn: female, feminine, effeminate

describe women and girls

or whatever is culturally attributed to them.

Female classifies individuals on the basis of their genetic makeup

or their ability to produce offspring in sexual reproduction.

It contrasts with male in all uses:

her oldest female relative;

the female parts of the flower.

Feminine refers to qualities and behavior deemed especially

appropriate to or ideally associated with women and girls.

In American and Western European culture,

these have traditionally included such features

as charm, gentleness, and patience:

to dance with feminine grace;

a feminine sensitivity to moods.

Feminine is sometimes used of physical features too:

small, feminine hands.

Effeminate is most often applied derogatorily to men or boys,

suggesting that they have traits culturally regarded

as appropriate to women and girls rather than to men:

an effeminate speaking style.

Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary:

wom′an•less, adj.

usage: Although formerly woman was

sometimes regarded as demeaning

and lady was the term of courtesy,

woman is the designation preferred by most modern female adults:

League of Women Voters;

American Association of University Women.

woman is the standard parallel to man.

When modifying a plural noun,

woman, like man, becomes plural:

women athletes;

women students.

The use of lady as a term of courtesy has diminished somewhat

in recent years, although it still survives in a few set phrases

(ladies' room; Ladies' Day).

lady is also used, but decreasingly,

as a term of reference for women engaged in occupations

considered by some to be menial or routine:

cleaning lady;

saleslady.

Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary:

-woman

a combining form of woman:

chairwoman;

forewoman;

spokeswoman.

usage:

Compounds ending in -woman commonly correspond

to the masculine compounds in -man:

councilman,

councilwoman;

congressman,

congresswoman.

The current practice, esp. in edited written English,

is to avoid the -man form in reference to a woman

or the plural -men when members of both sexes are involved.

Often, a sex-neutral term is used; for example,

council member rather than either councilman or councilwoman;

representatives or legislators rather than congressmen.

2022-03-21 ศัพท์ น่าสับสน - Set – F – female & woman

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