We've come up with mailman letter carrier, waitress server, fireman firefighter, policeman police officer, stewardess flight attendant, manned crewed missions, and many other perfectly tolerable gender-neutral terms, but I still haven't heard a good replacement for manhole.
Nor has Google, either, apparently. See page 11 of a checklist that may appeal to your inner civil engineer.
(h/t: Jon Brodkin)
5 comments:
And don't forget man-o-war
I thought Battleship replaced Man-o-war.
How about Worker access port (wap)? Street access port (Sap) Maintenance Opening Port (Mop)
While you're at it how about a new word for steam roller?" Nobody has seen an asphalt roller powered by steam in 100 years.
Street Roller?
My first thought was that man-o-war was an obsolete term, although TC's suggestion rings plausible. Wikipedia lends support to both points of view.
I've thought of alternatives for manhole similar to what you propose, TC. I have yet to come up with one that passes the "perfectly tolerable" test, though.
And you're right about needing a new term for steamroller. Wikipedia suggests road roller, a term I've heard nobody use, ever.
Of course, we still "dial" our phones.
A friend and I discussed this very idea years and years ago, and we agreed that the "-er" ending in "letter" and "carrier" were male gendered and thus inappropriate (in a joking way of course). We came up with "postal person", but the "-son", same problem again. I believe we finally settled on "postalist."
I have never heard of the suffix -er indicating male gender. Except, I suppose, in direct contrast to specifically feminine suffixes, such as waiter/waitress.
"Postalist" sounds to me more like someone who uses the postal service; e.g., the postalist sent three packages today.
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