Macmillan Holdings, LLC. Grammar Girl, Grammar Girl's, QDnow, and Quick and Dirty Tips are all trademarks of Macmillan Holdings, LLC. Which is the proper adjective? Misha grammar Wow thanks for a great article. I wholeheartedly agree that it is weird-sounding (and somehow sexist) to say "first woman vice presidential nominee." You didn't talk much about why exactly people are using that odd term. Is it that female does sound too clinical? Or that "woman" is a more empowering word somehow? Maybe it is that using "female" did make it sound like an improper vocation for a woman. People use this for "woman cop" and other non-first jobs. Hmm one clue is "women's soccer team." Or even "women's locker room." Or that place is a "woman-run coffee shop." http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/woman-versus-female.aspx?commentid=17803#Comments http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/woman-versus-female.aspx?commentid=17803#Comments Tue, 14 Jul 2009 06:51:49 GMT Chick grammar Hi. In the future I'm going to keep here links to their sites. But I do not worry about the sites where my link is removed. So if you do not want to see a mountain of links, simply delete this message. After 2 weeks, I will come back and check. http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/woman-versus-female.aspx?commentid=16937#Comments http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/woman-versus-female.aspx?commentid=16937#Comments Tue, 12 May 2009 07:54:40 GMT Ray grammar Another great article! Woman as an adjective has been around for ages. Even Shakespeare used it in its adjectival form. However, 500 years later, it still sounds awkward to my ear. Another aspect of this issue is parallelism. The English language has a large number complementary expressions such as man-woman and male-female, my general rule of thumb when I'm not sure is to substitute the complementary word or phrase and see if it makes sense and sounds good - this often works. Another aspect is intent, some people have used female in a derogatory manner and avoiding using the word because of that is to let some sexist morons hijack and deprive us of a perfectly good word. With regard to "lower animals" it is helpful to look at it from the point of view that "women" implies a certain cultural distinction; differentiating Homo sapiens from other species. Using the term "women" when referring to the female members of a herd of tule elk probably wouldn't do much to clarify the point being made. http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/woman-versus-female.aspx?commentid=15196#Comments http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/woman-versus-female.aspx?commentid=15196#Comments Thu, 18 Dec 2008 01:10:54 GMT Craig Girolami grammar Fun and interesting as always. Keep up the good work. craig http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/woman-versus-female.aspx?commentid=14795#Comments http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/woman-versus-female.aspx?commentid=14795#Comments Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:20:00 GMT gummybear grammar kool web site http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/woman-versus-female.aspx?commentid=14279#Comments http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/woman-versus-female.aspx?commentid=14279#Comments Thu, 09 Oct 2008 16:18:27 GMT GrammarBoy grammar Interesting and good points, although i agree with Shary that the lead in does a discussion of sex versus gender and little was said about that. That aside, I have always wondered the origin of using "woman" and "women" as adjectives but not "man" and "men." This seems sexist to me. Yes, I agree that say "man nurse" and "men models" sounds awkward, but that is because this sort of usage is new and uncommon. There was a time, in our lifetimes no less, that referring to females in non-traditional areas with the adjective "woman" and "women" was considered awkward as well. Nowadays, woman doctors and woman lawyers and other appellations is perfectly acceptable. The reasons are that the more English-speaking people use these appositives, the more acceptable they become. Ideally, of course, we would live in a world where we wouldn't need to use them. But in the meantime, I would like to see the use of man as an adjective more often. Like woman, it lends itself to a nuance less biological, less clinical than saying "male." http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/woman-versus-female.aspx?commentid=14236#Comments http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/woman-versus-female.aspx?commentid=14236#Comments Wed, 08 Oct 2008 11:53:26 GMT WR grammar Much harm is done to nonhuman animals because of the reflexive excuse that we are "better" than them. Being different is no reason to kill or torture someone, but this mythology of higher and lower animals perpetuates violence. If the only objection to using "male" and "female" as nouns is that it reminds us that we are animals when we desperately want to imagine ourselves as something else, then this is no objection at all. http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/woman-versus-female.aspx?commentid=14214#Comments http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/woman-versus-female.aspx?commentid=14214#Comments Tue, 07 Oct 2008 05:41:21 GMT Anang grammar Thanks for this site, it's really helpful. However I would suggest that, you comment on each comment left by readers of this site. May be, that would help them to understand you better. Why do some people say: "There is two reason..."in stead of: "there are two reasons"? http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/woman-versus-female.aspx?commentid=14114#Comments http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/woman-versus-female.aspx?commentid=14114#Comments Tue, 30 Sep 2008 12:02:11 GMT Adam grammar R.E. your use of "girl" in "Grammar Girl," I just want to point out that most of the time when I use the word "girl" it is because it implies informality rather than immaturity. That is, for me, it is usually the female equivalent of "guy", rather than "boy". "Woman" sounds a little too proper and "lady" too silly to use when referring to someone in casual everyday conversation. "I met a really nice girl at the library today" sounds more like a friendly encounter than the same sentence would if you substitute "woman." (Try the same with "man", "boy", "guy", etc. - I know it depends heavily on the person speaking and the person listening, but each version has slightly different connotations.) Years ago, I had a friend who disliked all uses of the word "girl" that did not refer to pre-pubescent females. It seems to me that informality is the primary motivation for using "girl" in place of "woman" - "Grammar Girl" sounds much more friendly than "Grammar Woman" (although if you were to hand the podcast over to a guy, "Grammar Man" would sound kind of like a superhero). What do you think? http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/woman-versus-female.aspx?commentid=14100#Comments http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/woman-versus-female.aspx?commentid=14100#Comments Mon, 29 Sep 2008 12:50:09 GMT carlos grammar what if there is a mix of women and girls? can one say females? http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/woman-versus-female.aspx?commentid=14078#Comments http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/woman-versus-female.aspx?commentid=14078#Comments Fri, 26 Sep 2008 18:53:08 GMT Tue, 14 Jul 2009 06:51:49 GMT http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/woman-versus-female.aspx feedback@quickanddirtytips.com (Managing Editor) feedback@quickanddirtytips.com (Webmaster) en-us