Comments on: The Word ‘Man’ was Originally Gender Neutral

By: Geir Thorsen

Geir Thorsen — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 05:51:28 +0000

This reminds me of the historical meaning of the word “girl”, which originally meant a child of either sex. Also back in the 19th century blue was the colour of choice for female children, while pink was for boys.

By: Uncle Bubba

Uncle Bubba — Sun, 23 May 2010 03:23:46 +0000

Sorry for the job loss, secretagentman. I’ve had pretty much the same thing happen to me. The politically correct hate being shown up. On the other hand, we’re in good company. Winston Churchill was speaking in Parliament in the 1920s and Lady Astor called him down for using “Man” to mean “the human race”. He responded, “Grammarians will attest that Man embraces woman, unless otherwise stated in the text.”

If I could BEGIN to have the grasp and command of the language that Sir Winston had I’d be happy.

By: neutral gender - StartTags.com

neutral gender - StartTags.com — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 06:11:10 +0000

[...] and connecting with others in a meaningful … Gender Neutral Baby Shower Invitations Wordings …The Word Man' was Originally Gender NeutralToday I found out that the word 'man' was originally gender neutral, meaning more or less the same [...]

By: secretagentman

secretagentman — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:36:19 +0000

Yeah, I remember telling some people at work this because I use the word “man” all the time as gender neutral because it sure beats using the word “person”. They try to correct me to use it incorrectly but I just told them that if they knew how they could look it up in a dictionary – it’s usually in the No. 3 slot of the meaning.

So they did and the correctors were corrected. I learned a lot that day as later they laid me off.

By: Ian McCoondog

Ian McCoondog — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 18:40:31 +0000

That’s what I was told in some university etymology class: “wer” as in werewolf meant a male human at one time.

“Woman” (according to the same class, is a contraction of something like “wife-man”, or “person who is wife”. I know this flies in the face of some theories involving women having wombs, but makes a lot more sense in terms of the evolution of words.