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Comment by jawns | Hacker News Reader

I know this doesn't really touch on the meat of her column, but I was kind of surprised that Mathilde uses "woman CEO" and "female CEO" interchangeably. Usually people have a strong preference for one or the other. (Personally, I prefer using adjectives as adjectives and nouns as nouns, and don't think there's much of a need to turn "woman" into an adjective.)

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Technically and linguistically speaking, "female" is an adjective, and "woman" is a noun. You'd talk about a woman who is a CEO, or a female CEO. Some professions and niches, often in the sciences, use female and male as nouns: i.e., "the female of the species," or "the subject is a Caucasian male, 47." This latter usage is becoming increasingly common, to the point where the exclusively adjectival nature of "male" and "female" is being erased. Meanings and usage are pretty fluid over time.

Of course, words like woman, man, female, and male also have connotations above and beyond their technical parts of speech, such as the connotations Mathilde talks about.

Traditionally, as in decades ago, it was actually considered somewhat vulgar to use terms like "male" and "female" to refer to human beings. The term "woman CEO" would have been preferred for that reason. Somehow I like the aesthetic of "woman CEO" over "female CEO" for the same reason. It seems more dignified and humanistic.

Right; "female" and "male" bring to mind animals and base biology. "Woman" and "Man" distinctly separate us from the animal kingdom.

Hence why I tend to use "female" and "male." Mankind is not separate from the animal kingdom. Although I suppose male human and female human are the least ambiguous.

> I suppose male human and female human are the least ambiguous.

And make you sound like an alien anthropologist, rather than, well, a human.

"A human"? "Human" is an adjective. The term is "human being".

Even these days, many people have a problem with "female". Some people with particularly unsavoury views of women have a particular tendency to use it.

Even if there weren't fluidity, we can still compound nouns all we want in English:

`tax`, `income tax`, `income tax return`, `income tax return form`, `income tax return form processor`, `income tax return form processor office`, etc.

Not that I think that's what's going on in the article's `woman CEO` examples.

In a weird way, I've always admired the German method of just smashing words together when they become commonly associated in compound phrases. It creates some long, ungainly mouthfuls. But at least you never have trouble parsing them in a sentence. :)

"linguistically speaking" words mean whatever native speakers use them to mean... the field of linguistics would be pretty boring if it were about writing down mostly-arbitrary rules for people to follow.

""linguistically speaking" words mean whatever native speakers use them to mean... the field of linguistics would be pretty boring if it were about writing down mostly-arbitrary rules for people to follow."

I'm not advocating "mostly-arbitrary rules for people to follow." Just pointing out the technical meanings of both terms. I also pointed out that these meanings are fluid and are changing. Obviously usage is subject to change, and if I came across as opposing that, I didn't mean to. I was just addressing the question implied in the parent comment.

I apologize if I gave the wrong impression.

You didn't. Pointing out common usage isn't dictating a Platonic language ideal.

Eh, adjectives can function as nouns sometimes (females, whites, although doing this sometimes creates an issue such as where it's preferred to say 'x people' instead of 'xes') and nouns tend to easily function as adjectives (laptop mouse, house key). Very malleable language. In French you'd have to say "mouse of the laptop" for example.

I'm a female executive and I've never, ever heard of that. Seems very strange.

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