Reflecting on the recent changes in language

"Wif" meant woman (not just wife), as in midwife (i.e. with-woman). Wif became wifmann (meaning woman-person) which eventually developed into woman.

For some reason men lost "wer" (and also lost waepnedmann i.e. weaponed-person i.e. penis-person) and ended up just getting called men i.e. people.

PriOn there used to be a separate word for man in Old English, if you really wanted to specify male person — wer (as in werewolf). "Man" just meant person (which also in practice might've usually meant male person, but, well, yeah).

Undergraduette is hilarious.

I haven't heard 'sex kitten' for decades.

A quick Google of current bank application forms in the UK shows "gender" being used to mean sex, to the present day.

Perhaps she did, Lurk, but without this thread, I wouldn't have been prompted to flick through the 1934 addenda to the Concise Oxford and discover that the word "undergraduette" once existed to a great enough extent to justify a place in a bookshelf reference.

I’m interested in the difference between the definitions of woman and man. Adult human female was the first definition for woman, whereas man was not adult human male, but had a much wider meaning, broadly relating to mankind, I suppose.

That feels very non-specific, as if men don’t really have a definition of themselves as individuals.

But it also is a perfect demonstration of the inequality of regard for the different sexes and how, only a short time ago, women were the aberrant humans who needed a separate definition, and that we moved almost seamlessly from that position to another, where women are described as non-men and where we can have no definition of our own as some men are now insisting they must be a part of womanhood.

Stand down. Deborah Cameron already did the research.

https://debuk.wordpress.com/2016/12/15/a-brief-history-of-gender/

I would think it was in the last decade that I noticed gender stopped being used for sex on forms and surveys in the uk. I don't think I was really aware of the difference until the 'butterfly' drama on tv. Probably when I became aware that transexuals were to be referred to as transgender. You would skirt around using 'sex' in polite conversation. Possibly the access to constant porn via internet removed the taboo

Gender wasn't used in this way in the UK. The PP who said that it wasn't is probably from the UK (this is a UK site). They are not "talking twaddle".

It possibly did happen in other English speaking countries apart from America, just not in the UK.

Masculine, and feminine (and surrounding words).

It's just short for have sexual intercourse with like sex is short for sexual intercourse. You wouldn't say have gender with as gender has never as far as I'm aware been used to mean sexual intercourse.

Sorry I feel like I missing your point!

Man (two images), and woman.

Not too different, but I happen to have a 1934 (3rd) Concise Oxford in my bedside bookcase. (It's the same as the 2nd, but with some extra words and definitions added on to the end, including a bit extra for "sex".)

Here's gender, sex, and the extra bit about sex.

I'm not. I was replying to the PPs who were saying that gender was never used as a "polite" word for sex, or alternatively that this happened only in America.

I'm fairly sure that I encountered it in the UK in the 1980s too, but I can't give specific examples the way I can with SA, so I could be misremembering that.

You can't make any assumptions about how the words were used in the UK from your experience of how those words were used in South Africa.

So where does “have sex with” come from? I thought that was an Americanism to avoid the vernacular.

I’ve never heard anyone say “have gender with”

I don't believe South African government departments and banks in the 1970s were much influenced by Americanisms, to be honest. We didnt even have TV and most people would have been unaware of most Americanisms....

It's really more a case of "sex" being a saucy word in a prudish/religious conservative society, so using what would then have been seen as a complete synonym. The same root impetus as the American (socially conservative) context but not influenced by it.

The UK was able to have and pass a SexDiscrimination Act and no one taking part in the campaign, drafting the text or debating in the HoC had a fainting fit about using the word sex.

“This place exists to remedy injustices and half the population of Britain, for one reason or another and largely on grounds of their gender, think they are unfairly treated right across the spectrum.”
Mr. William Hamilton
(Fife, Central)

From the debate. Recorded in Hansard. He’d have been in his late fifties at the time

And literally a year ago, on a form for a major South African financial institution I was asked whether my "gender" was M or F.

A tragically high number of overseas outfits do seem to use American rather than British English. And that would be totally normal American. You very rarely see Americans use "Sex" formally in that context, the opposite of the UK.

I often see "Gender: M/F" where I am too, and I roll my eyes at it the same way I do at "color" or "-ize" or "cookie". Just another Americanism...

Have never seen a "gender" question with anything other than "M/F" to make me get awkward with "well if you don't mean sex, I can't answer this".

rowing up in mid-century South Africa though (a socially conservative society where euphemisms were particulatly rife)

Okay, not being in the UK makes your memory make more sense. I'm only looking at British usage.

Maybe some colonial distance from the base of the language helped both America and South Africa accept gender-meaning-just-sex earlier.

And literally a year ago, on a form for a major South African financial institution I was asked whether my "gender" was M or F. No question about my sex. (There didn't seem to be any grammatical or mathematic errors in the form as far as I could see, either).