Ugly words

Below, I was talking about "gender neutralization." (And I admit it; even though I realize God isn't some guy sitting on an armchair made out of clouds, I still am jarred when someone refers to God as "she" because I think of God as male, even though I realize God transcends such things).

And Ken mentioned "feperson." (Reminds me of the joke on the Simpsons back when it was funny - the kids said, "The mailman's coming!" and Marge reminded them their delivery person was a lady, so then they changed it to "The Femaleman's coming!")

Well, I have one that can top that. And I THINK the person who said this was being serious...this was back, I think, junior year in college, in an intro stats class. A young woman who was apparently trying her wings at being semi-radical said: "Why do we have to call it MANufacturing? Shouldn't it be PERSONufacturing instead?"

Etymology FAIL.

(Manufacture actually comes from the root "manu-" meaning "hand." Literally, it means "things made by hand." No indication of to which gender those hands belong.)

I, having had a couple Linguistics classes (and also generally knowing such things from having, you know, read books and stuff) just sat there and kind of rolled my eyes. I have to admit it I kind of love it when someone goes off on one of those Emily Litella rants. Sadly, the prof did not smack her down. (I probably would have, but very quietly and very graciously, by simply remarking that the root word was "manu" meaning hand and not "man" meaning, well, man)

Of course, this was also at a school that agonized over the term "freshman" and wanted to replace it with the ugly-if-somewhat-traditional "Frosh" or the clunky "first-year students." (Frankly, I think maybe a better term might be "fresh meat" but I suppose that excludes the vegetarians).