Just out of curiosity, why did you go with "lady" and not with "woman"?
boy/girl guy/gal gentleman/lady man/woman male/female
When people mix pairs, it is most often to single out the woman. One of the most egregious is guy/girl. The use of "lady" is old-fashioned, and raises a red flag about what other "old-fashioned" ideas the speaker might hold.
Keep your paws off my shared language. I want to be able to refer to people without googling for the polite terminology du jour, since even "woman" is offensive in some circles.
Edit: to further clarify, when I use "lady" it quite literally means the same as "guy" with the caveat that the gender is taken into account. "You ladies going out for lunch?" is the same as "You guys going out for lunch?" with the difference being there would be no males in the first group. "I interviewed a lady" is the same in my head as "I interviewed a guy."
Most words have 'a connotation', it's not a reason not to use them. Offense at 'lady' and preference for 'woman' is baffling.
Like most similar baffling things on HN, I'll assume this is an American (or even region within) thing.
I suspect you're more or less alone in your opinion.
In my native language, there is a semi-formal term we use which is neither rigid nor offensive... "tuan" for men (Sir) and "cik puan" for women (Miss Mrs). For English, I think the closest to this is "lady", and this might be why many non-native English speakers use "sir".
In my native language we have different terms for:
- (Very) young woman as in child - up to around college age
- Woman up to her, let's say thirties or mid-thirties (it's a matter of personal reference, I guess). English stil has only "girl".
- After that we generally use "woman" as in more mature female.
Hard to mess up, the context is rather clear.
- Then comes miss/misses which can basically overlap with some of the previous, but you kinda eyeball it
- Lady is more of a descriptive term for someone's style and classy behaviour, and can refer to any age, even to a little girl. If you want to be official, than we would probably use Ms/Mrs, rarely lady. Sometimes lady can be pejorative. It's complicated to call (invoke) somebody as "lady" (hey lady). "Ladies and gentlemen" is a rare direct usage.
So... When using English without switching context properly, I find myself confused what to use because I miss some tools I'm used to in my language. I actually find "lady" to be handy in that manner, because it kinda replaces multiple terms I'm used to :-).