Using the word "lady" for a woman, but not "gentleman" for a man

In those examples it would almost sound odd if you switched in man and woman. Like you were being extra emphatic or something.

I'm a nurse - at my workplace we tend to use lady and gentleman to describe the patients when talking to each other and to them. "The gent / gentleman in Bay 1 needs some analgesia" would be used, rather than man. Or " Mary, you'll be getting a new roommate. The new lady will be Susan" rather than woman.

I've always liked semantics - in this case I see the terms lady and gentleman as being on a higher level, more polite than the blunter man / woman.

I don't think you can make the kinds of assumptions you want to when comparing the words in use. There are a lot of reasons one word may be dropped or replaced, but another won't. Sometimes for example there are several groups of words that may have similar meanings, and some of them are dropped, but not necessarily the ones that match each other in the most exact way. There can also be really significant regional and class differences in connotations and usage.

The type of analysis that wants to look at language as if its straightforward and clear cut and differences are always indicating some kind of preference or denigration of one party or group, is rather naive, and I'd like to be able to say it's passe.

As far as lady and gentlemen go, I could make several guesses as to why that might be:
possibly because in days when we expected a certain amount of public chivalry towards women, there was something of a tendency in polite society to call women "ladies" even if in fact, they weren't, and that usage has stuck. Whereas the term gentlemen was more often used in its technical sense.
Or the equivalent in popular use is "gents" and that has fallen out of favour because some people seem to associate it with toilets (that would not have occurred to me except it was brought up in the other thread.)

I always thought gentleman means respectable and nice things like holding the door. I realised it doesn't get used so much now, but I preferred the way men behaved when it was in common parlance.

It is much harder to be a gentleman than a lady. I can be a lady easily enough, I don't know if my beloved husband has ever qualified as a gentleman, though he may have had his moments, never enough to qualify for the term!

In all honesty though: gentleman conjures up cane and top hat while lady is a woman who has good morals and manners.

I think I probably use 'gent' quiet a lot, I work in shops and have to hand customers over to actual store staff often, "hey Kate, could you help this gent" or "this gentleman is looking for the cookery books" wouldn't be unusual things to say. I think I probably use lady, gentleman & customer equally, saying man or woman sounds too harsh.

Lady and gentleman are class distinctions that people are still trying to work around in modern language usage.

I don't really ever say "Mind the man." However, I do say, "Move over, there's a wo/man trying to get around you (to husband)." So not sure if there's a disparity in my own speech.

I find woman quite harsh, maybe it is just my accent, but "mind the woman" sounds ruder than "mind the lady"

(For context ds (ASD) has no spatial awareness so just walks into people)

I often refer to service workers as sir or madam. "Sir" generally doesn't get a second thought, but "Madam" certainly seems to haha (though not in a bad way). Then again, personally I also refer to groups of men and women as gentlemen and ladies respectively :P Can't speak for people who aren't me, but I agree that "ladies" is used more often than "gentlemen" in a general setting. Nothing useful to add beyond that I'm afraid.

I say gentleman. It amuses me and I feel archaic. Plus, it puts an expectation on the man’s behaviour.