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Hey, hey, Wof! I'm a woman...
There is, however, that Peanuts girl character who calls another girl, "Sir." Mebbe that's how you're thinkin' this mornin'!
Best regards,
WordWoman
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that Peanuts girl character who calls another girl, "Sir."
It was also standard in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine to refer to officers as sir irrespective of the officer's sex. Probably in other Star Treks of that vintage, too, but DS9 was the only one I watched with any regularity. Ain' nothing particularly sex specific about the term other than the minor fact that it stems from a Latin masculine form of an adjective.
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>to refer to officers as sir irrespective of the officer's sex.
yessiree, bob -- faldage must have been still in a holiday mood to write this way irregardless of what he'd usually type. 8^)
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irrespective of the officer's sex.tsuwm, would not "gender" have been more precise -- or were you deliberately invoking penumbra?  Btw, I realize that my point is inconsistent with the usage note at http://www.bartleby.com/61/59/G0075900.html -- which itself notes inconsistency of usage. How do others of you conceptualize the linguistic distinction between "sex" and "gender"?
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"Irregardless" - We all know what it means, but many might list it high among their pet peeves. But I wonder what the technical name is for the internal double negative. How about some other words with same problem?
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Sex: male or female, a biological category often confused with
Gender: many examples in many languages, a grammatical category often confused with sex in languages which have adopted the so-called "natural" gender, notably English and Turkish. Many languages have two genders but by no means are they masculine and feminine. Frequently we find the two genders are animate and inanimate. Other languages have many genders, e.g., round objects, long narrow objects, flat objects, etc. In English sex and gender are often considered to be equivalent concepts. Some consider this to be excessive prudery comparable to calling poultry legs drumsticks or placing coverings over piano legs.
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faldage must have been still in a holiday mood to write this way
FTR. I was going to use irregardless but I figured, hey, give it a rest. Fat Chance!
the full line was irregardless of whether or not the officer was or wasn't male or female or not.
[whiter]AFTR when *I'm being humorous I use Aint for my father's sister (or mother's sister for that matter)[/whiter]
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My, my, and to think this tempest-in-a-teapot started out as a discussion of the arbitrari- and unfair-ness of job-hunting in New York during the Depression, which itself was a pretty far cry from people being unwilling or to shy to speak. One-hundred-eighty degree turnaround ! How often do we do that?
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Returning to the original question: Why do we ask, "Cat got your tongue?" But cats getting people's tongues? That just doesn't make any sense to me.
The phrase is clearly a corruption of the standard inquiry made of a person who is so very silent that one wonders whether his-or-her mouth has been sewn shut -- a wonder expressed by the inquiry, "Catgut your tongue?"
(he said facetiously)
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Dear Keiva,
Just to keep the record straight, while we imagine this person's lips sewn together, it's really sheep gut, after all. (And then there's the wild, imaginative leap to sheepish--but I'd be contsuwmed, for sure, for that one!)
Best regards,
WordWonderer
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