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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lady Lurksalot who wrote (6384)	1/19/1998 6:38:00 PM
From: Jacques Chitte	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71178

Hey, Holly. We've had some rousing beer talk on the subject at the (strangely quiescent) Grammar thread. There are areas of the language which are in flux. (And I'd like to ask the literati to flux off, already!!) "Gender" is a currently contested patch of semantic territory. I'm of the old school; to me "gender" is a narrow term denoting a grammatical category. Words have gender. The people or animals granted gendered words come in sexes. (And if they don't come, there are some really nice self-help books...) It's become fashionable to use "gender" as a somehow more polite term for someone's sex. I hate it, but my hardbitten resistance won't turn this flood of verbal yuckiness. The Dictionary of Political Correctness offers "s'h'it" as the universal pronoun. I'm guessing "s/he/it" would play fine in the Deep South. I've heard it told (as a riddle) that "cleave" is the only word in the English language which is its own antonym. I have a niggle with that. One form (to divide) is transitive. The other (to adhere) is intransitive and always requires the preposition "to", as in "to cleave to someone". Lob some Vitamin E at those pesky radicals. Oughtta soak'em right up and leave you feeling minty-fresh! :-)