Shon Faye thinks the words "girl", "woman" and "she" were "invented" in the 13th century

I also expect girls that were unable to be looked after by their family were sent into service rather than fostered.

I got lost in a dictionary of Old High German because of this thread yesterday. I bet Shon Faye thinks we are all waluwib (cruel women).

Very interesting!

The Romans were big on adopting sons weren't they, can't remember hearing they bothered to do the same with girls.

Anlaf - I wonder if it's because of the practice of sending away one's son to a relative to be looked after (certainly what the nobility did in the high Middle Ages, not sure if the practice was going in AS times). As in one's foster son is someone that one is looking after for their parents, not because their parents can't have them but as part of their wider upbringing and education? And those children are almost always male?

Balls (or bqllr as Anlaf might have said in 941)

foster son and father are fóstri, foster mother and "to foster" are fóstra

Ooh I do like all this etymology.

I am enjoying nosing through that english - old norse dictionary. It's so interesting which words have many versions, which have double meanings. I note that there is a word for the verb foster (fóstra), and the same word means foster-mother (rather depersonalising). Then foster son (fóstra), foster father (also fóstra), and foster brother (fóstbróðir). No word for foster sister or daughter though. I can't help but wonder if there's a reason those haven't been recorded.

I'd very like to see what the kvenna on Kvennváðir&Fegrð think of that hǫnd-belgr**.

*women, wives
**women's clothing and beauty

• **hand-bag

That picture - there's only ever one word that comes to mind when I see SF... Petulant

It's a mystery how anyone knew that the figure that came to exact revenge for the death of Grendell was Grendell's "modor", given that apparently we were all in a flux about knowing who was male and who was female in Ye Olden Days

Perhaps they don’t realise S&B is there? Surely they would be all over it if they did?

Alice

Loving 'malodorous masses'

Oh I'd love to see Shon take on the Style & Beauty lot with that handbag.

FWR are pussycats compared to S&B. Those women are harsh.

Did all those people thousands of years ago making the sculptures of huge-breasted, big-arsed fertility goddesses really not have a name for what they were predicting

An Israeli Boy Thought He Found a Pebble. Turns Out, It’s an 11,000-year-old Fertility Figurine

The Neolithic-era stone figure, which the boy put in a box at home, was recently discovered two years later by his mother, who turned it over to archaeologists

"These figurines were a symbol of human fertility and there are researchers who view them as the 'mother goddess.

www.haaretz.com/israel-news/8-year-old-israeli-boy-finds-11-000-year-old-fertility-figurine-1.6432552

So many wonderful matriarchal cultures which survived for centuries.

I think a really nice way of getting a sense of Old English is finding a version of a work which has the OE in one side and the modern English translation on the other.

I agree. I once turned the page in my parallel translation of Beowulf and picked up the old English instead of the translation. Suffice it to say the English translatio was much less bawdy.

I remember something about man being the word for person, with werman and wifman the male and female types. However language evolved, there's no doubt that there were separate words to describe the male and female sexes.

Tallulah

I can see Lily and Shon suggesting cake to the malodorous masses. Jane Fae would be there knitting, however...

Now I keep thinking of that Carry On film Don't Lose your Head:
"Have you ever known a lady of breeding who needed a shave?... When she kissed me just now, I distinctly felt her stubble!"

I wonder what Shon was carrying in the "Mumsnet handbag"?

An MN handbag surely would be defined by its contents. Those may vary according to the number and age of any children she may have, I suppose.

Because Mumsnet = Mothers= Drab, dreary, no style, no opinions. The same old Norman Bates shtik.

Everything is Mumsnet's fault.

Not sure why it's Mumsnet's fault that Shon has bad taste in bags.

Those high heels that those bewigged, beperfumed, rouged gentlemen tottered round in were wholly impracticable and impossible to walk very far in (so like now but worse). So they were only worn by people with nothing to do but pose and simper and look stunning (and possibly brave) in some very flattering portraits

Traditionally at this point someone storms the Bastille don't they?

(all feminine! I like ho, can we use that?)

I just made the dog jump by laughing so loudly at this! Bloody creature's begging for a walk now.

Oh I'd love to see Shon take on the Style & Beauty lot with that handbag.

Maiden, woman and daughter all derive from AS. Girl is also an AS construction so probably does too. Shockingly, there are no native speakers left with whom to check.

I hope, at least, they enjoyed their erasure

I draw the line at wearing one of those giant starchy neck ruffs that made people look like the venom spitting dinosaurs from Jurassic Park.