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Comment by Kalium | Hacker News Reader

They're mostly about style in some manner. A chignon is a hairstyle, a bandeau is a garment, kohl is a type of facial makeup (with its own fascinating history). Jaquard, chambray, chenille, sateen, and damask are all words that apply to fabrics in some fashion. An espadrille is a particular style of shoe.

Verbena is a plant. A pessary is a medical device. A doula is a supportive person through a medical experience, often childbirth in an American context.

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A pessary is a medical device inserted into the vagina, for further context.

I knew that one. Thanks to sex ed.

Monty Python was my introduction[1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzVHjg3AqIQ

The data can be downloaded from https://osf.io/nbu9e/ . I tracked it down because I was wondering:

- pessary was known by 53% of females, 19% of males

- suppository was known by 88% of females, 80% of males

Suppository is one of those words that I would assume 99.9% of the population knows because of it being common over the counter, and in sitcoms and media. I'm assuming they're including children under 12 in the data? That would explain the low percentages.

That checks out. I'd say at least 80% of my encounters with the word have been jokes in media, or jokes between people (probably inspired by or ripped off from media). Most young kids wouldn't know it, though.

More people are functionally illiterate than you might expect if you're in a high IQ bubble like the tech industry. In 2017, 19% of American adults scored level 1 or below on the PIAAC literacy test: https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=69

Here's a sample reading test: https://www.oecd.org/skills/piaac/Literacy%20Sample%20Items.... It's a drawing of an ear, and the options are "ear", "egg", "lip" and "jar". You have to pick the correct word.

Wonder how much of this is ESL

If the US has so many non-English speakers that it materially affects national literacy statistics, one might wonder how we ended up with an immigration policy that produces a permanent underclass of people who are locked out of meaningful jobs and are entirely outside the protection of the law, due to being in the country illegally.

You don't have to be in the country illegally to not speak English (well). ~14% of the country is foreign-born, of whom about 3/4 are here legally: https://www.ilctr.org/quick-us-immigration-statistics/

Most immigrants are required to have basic English literacy for citizenship, per:

https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-12-part-e-chapter...

You don't need to be a citizen to be a legal immigrant however.

I had no idea what a suppository is, but I do recognise pessary. But that's probably because suppository is completely different in Dutch, which is not the case for pessary.

What is the population (responders) sample size? Percentages don't mean much without this.

About 400 for each word. So any individual word doesn't mean much, I agree - I think they're more interested in the general trends.

388

I knew this because of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._One_Package...

If it's the same as the Dutch word "pessarium", I think it's a form of birth control. Got mentioned in sex-ed in school, though obviously not something I (as a man) ever had to use. I guess it makes sense for women to be more familiar with a device that only women ever use.

It’s funny because a lot of these are near everyday use French words:

- boucle: loop

- ruche: beehive

- chignon: hair bun?

- chenille: caterpillar

- bandeau: headband

- voile: veil

…

France has most (or a significant percentage) of the leading fashion houses and cosmetic brands. So it makes sense.

> France has most (or a significant percentage) of the leading fashion houses and cosmetic brands. So it makes sense.

Also, I think French words (in general) have associations of "high class" and "fashionable" in the American context, so calling something by a French word is an easy way for a marketer to fancy something up (for certain classes of something).

French association with "high class" goes a long ways back, including to when Brittania was under Norman rule in the early 1000s.

Much of the loan words from Old French are considered classier compared to equivalent words from Old english

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_with_dua...

Exactly. This is most likely the cause.

There are no English words of non-French origin for many of these; it's not a marketing tactic: it's just the only way to denote e.g. boucle fabric or chenille yarn.

I attempted to learn French at one point and one thing I realized is that fancy words in English are frequently their direct translation in French. I assume this comes from royalty generally speaking both English and French. If there's a French user here, do you know if the reverse happened too?

Arguably goes back to the Norman conquest. You muck about in the fields with the Germanic swine but eat the French-derived pork. You raise cows but eat beef. Likewise mutton.

Military words also tend to come from French, which is how they got to be eating those fine foods.

But remember, the French have no word for entrepreneur :) [1]

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisoncoleman/2014/02/14/entrep...

Damn, that's a stupid article - another one - from Forbes. Entrepreneur is a French word, and entreprise is company in French. Jean-Baptiste Say coined the word 250 years ago. https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/08/origin-of-entrep...

For context: She's starting off the article with that obviously false malapropism sometimes attributed to George W. Bush as a springboard to talk about entrepreneurship in France, and it's clear that she is using it as a joke.

Indeed. It's tongue-in-cheek. As an aside, I heard a rumour it was Regan, not Bush who first uttered it. As a second side, I'm not sure it's technically a malapropism.

Also other words relating to those in charge, like "government", "minister" and "crown".

> Verbena is a plant

Hey, I knew that one! And sateen. But those were the only two. I didn't expect the divide to be so stark.

In hindsight, I suppose it's reasonable that terms from the largest, most gender-unbalanced niches should have considerable predictive power, but I didn't expect it to be quite so effective going in.

I only knew this one. I have a lemon verbena. It makes great infusions. I highly recommend it if you live in a warmish climate. They grow very fast.

I wonder if it’s the plant kingsfoil is based on in LOTR.

I recognised Verbena as a plant from The Witcher. So it counts as gaming-related for me.

Freesia is a plant too (my grandmother's favourite). I knew most of the fabric ones (ruche, tulle, chenille, etc) but that's my wife's hobby. I don't know if that counts as trade-specific jargon or not (I guess not if the majority of women know them, and not just dressmakers). People in our industry should definitely know jacquard, though.

I think the bigger surprise for me is now that the most gender imbalanced words are highly imbalanced, but that more than half of the male ones seem so common place and hardly obscure to me. I imagine women would react the same way to most of the female words.

I am a bit surprised that sateen is on that list since it is one of the most/more common fabric used for bedding.

Damask is a bit more funny word in that video games tend to commonly use it for items, given that it was popular during the middle ages. Never seen it in clothing stores.

There isn't a wikipedia article about jacquard as a fabric, which is a bit odd. There is one about the Jacquard machine?

Chambray was an popular fabric in the 19th century, but I don't remember seeing it in clothes stores.

Chenille seems to be a fabric used in yarns.

Sateen probably is a quite relevant example - I, as a male, have absolutely no idea what fabric is used for the bedding I sleep in or buy, it might as well be sateen but even when looking for bedding I would not care to read the part of the description where it could say 'sateen'; perhaps I might touch it while browsing in a store and use the sense as a criteria for choosing between, but it's not relevant enough to read and use the fabric name at the time, much less remember it. I know that there exist fancy beddings made of silk, but that's literally as far as my interest in bedding fabric has ever gone.

> There isn't a wikipedia article about jacquard as a fabric, which is a bit odd.

You got me curious, here are the lengths of the Wikipedia articles for the top three words:

Women know better

  - peplum: 886 words (disambiguation is the default)

  - boucle: 187 words

  - rouche: 196 words (disambiguation is the default and leads you to "Gather (knitting)")

Men know better

  - shemale: 1257 words

  - howitzer: 2211 words

  - parsec: 2505 words

Is this the reflection of some sort of gender bias in Wikipedia contributors and editors?

Wikipedia's own article on it states:

> In a 2018 survey covering 12 language versions of Wikipedia and some other Wikimedia Foundation projects, 90% of contributors reported their gender as male, 8.8% as female, and 1% as other.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_bias_on_Wikipedia

Curiously, peplum, boucle, and rouche were exactly the ones I didn't recognize. (Well, and whipstitch.)

ah, Rouché's theorem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rouch%C3%A9%27s_theorem

If you look up "chambray shirt" they'll likely be familiar to you

I think most dads would know what a doula is

Not in the US, I bet. The only reason I know is that I had a male co-worker whose wife was one.

US Dad of 2. We had a doula for our first child, she was hugely helpful, even in a hospital birth. Highly recommend!

Doulas are yuppie stuff in the US, mostly. Also connected with home births to a large degree, rates of interest in which I'd expect are also connected with income, to a point. I'd definitely bet most US fathers wouldn't be able to tell you what it means, though it's possible that a majority of fathers on this site know the term (I did—but then, of course I do).

I'd be interested to see how knowledge of a lot of these words breaks down by income. (I too know what a doula is; I'm not sure if I knew this before my partner was pregnant. We did not use a doula, but we're of the class of people who at least think about it.)

Oh man, this exact thing but for income brackets would be fascinating.

New father of a 7 month old here (at the tender age of 49 no less).

We used a doula, but only as a support person (I believe in medical advances, hah) and she was fantastic for that role.

I am 38 and so much more tired from doing this than I would have if I were ten years younger. Not sure how I could do it if I were ten years older.

I'm in the UK and I'd associate doulas with hippies more than yuppies, might just be me though.

There was a doula on a 2004 episode of "Frasier" [1] which is probably where I learned the word.

[1] http://www.kacl780.net/frasier/transcripts/season_11/episode...

>> I think most dads would know what a doula is

> Not in the US, I bet. The only reason I know is that I had a male co-worker whose wife was one.

Yeah, I also feel the term and role could be very subculture-specific, and mainly limited to urban, very-liberal women interested in "wellness."

I've seen the term given brief treatment in some new parent books, but I would not have registered it if I hadn't already had some familiarity.

On the one hand, it's funny that you put "wellness" in scare quotes, but on the other hand my wife is into "wellness" and I absolutely get it.

This one wouldn't.

I'm a dad, and I'm familiar will all the words except pepium, ruche, doula, and shemale. I can guess that last one, but I've never heard it before.

BTW, my wife was familiar with all the words except checksum. Now she’s 100%.

Verbena is a plant... commonly used as a fragrance for lotions and creams.

And here I was thinking I knew one of the "female" words because I recognized verbena. Verbena also means a party in Spanish, so I just assumed it was taken with that meaning in (American) English.

I only ever saw the word Kohl(cabbage) when I played Stardew Valley in German. Never seen or heard any of the other female-dominant words in my life

That's a different Kohl. The english word Kohl means a type of african/middle eastern make-up (Kajal in german).

It might also be a interpreted as a reference to a department store chain that mostly sells clothing - Kohl's.

The eye makeup 'kohl' is in no way related to the German word for cabbage. Apparently it's an Arabic word (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kohl). Funnily enough, Kohle (with a schwa at the end) in German means coal (as a mass noun) which is of course black, like the eye makeup.

I always assumed kohl was somehow related to coal. Are you saying it's not?

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