French

What’s the Word for a Male Nurse?

Niall O'Donnell 15 Comments

Why, just nurse, of course. But if someone asked you, you’d probably still think for a moment, wouldn’t you? Because it does feel very much like a female job in a lot of ways. And it’s still a role mostly performed by women. It’s evidence of the persistence of gender stereotypes like the idea that women are more natural caregivers.

So of course even though the word for a male nurse is still just nurse, we usually specify that someone is a male nurse. That’s not too surprising, considering how deep our associations between nursing and femininity go.

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A Touch of Diaeresis

Niall O'Donnell 15 Comments

Can you think of an English word, not borrowed from another language, that has an accent or other diacritic? (a diacritic is simply any glyph added to a letter: see here for examples).

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Mr, Mrs, and Ms

Niall O'Donnell 12 Comments

Teaching French-speaking teenagers recently, I was momentarily surprised when they started to call me Mister. Then I remembered that in French the word monsieur can be used like sir in American English. It doesn’t need to come before a surname, like Mister in English, so most students refer to their male teachers as Monsieur, as we use Sir in English. But they of course understandably translated monsieur to mister.

We use sir to refer to a teacher in most varieties of English too, but not to refer to a man in general when we don’t know his name. It’s only really used in that way in American English.

Mister though, is used in basically the same way in every form of English, as the standard honorific for an adult male. Isn’t it curious though, that for women there are three honorifics: Miss, Ms, and Mrs?

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Begging the Question

Niall O'Donnell 21 Comments

Writing about the etymology of the word clock yesterday reminded me of when I wrote about the word to decimate recently, and how people are fond of citing its original meaning as being to reduce by 10%, even though that’s not true.

As I said before, I can understand people having this misconception, and I can understand the instinct to correct people. There have always been people who’ve acted this way about language, but recently I’ve noticed more and more people taking such a prescriptive approach to English.

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The Word Clock? Now that Rings a Bell…

Niall O'Donnell 8 Comments

The word clock has quite a long history, unsurprising for such a common and simple word.

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How’s it Going? 

Niall O'Donnell 5 Comments

How’s what going exactly? Obviously you don’t really need to think about that if someone asks you this question.

The correct answer is of course, Fine thanks, how are you? It’s just a greeting, so you don’t really need to tell the person how you are, though I sometimes do, especially if I have something interesting to tell them. Still, the question remains: how’s what going? And where? 

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Taxi or Cab? 

Niall O'Donnell 3 Comments

Both are correct, regardless of whether you’re speaking British or American English. If that’s all you wanted to know, you can now go about enjoying your Sunday. But if you want to know how goats, Greek, a sign of the Zodiac, and stuffed animals fit into the equation, then please, read on.

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