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Meh, the female ones don't seem to be English (at least a lot of them). The male ones are mostly international words.
by Yajirobe 5y ago
Meh, the female ones don't seem to be English (at least a lot of them). The male ones are mostly international words.
- dymk 5y agoIf they’re not English, aren’t the female words also international words then too? Why’s that meh?
- eckmLJE 5y agothey're all english - peplum - late 17th century: via Latin from Greek peplos . - boucle - late 19th century: French, literally ‘buckled, curled’. - pessary - late Middle English: from late Latin pessarium, based on Greek pessos ‘oval stone’ (used in board games). - doula - 1960s: modern Greek, from Greek doulē ‘female slave’. - chignon - late 18th century: from French, originally ‘nape of the neck’, based on Latin catena ‘chain’. - tulle - early 19th century: from Tulle, a town in SW France, where it was first made. etc
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dimitrios1 5y agoInteresting, doule in modern greek just means work. Doula is one I would have never known had it not been for the pregnant women in my life.
- blueflow 5y agoHaving had latin in school, i understood some of the female words via their latin word roots.
- AlgorithmicTime 5y ago
- brimble 5y agoThe female words are largely romance language loan words because they're related to textiles and fashion and, in the English speaking world, France and Italy dominate those fields (or did for a long enough time, historically, that tons of the terminology comes from their languages, anyway). They're still English.
- caf 5y agoAgreed they're still English. It's a little interesting how many from both sides of the list are loanwords, though - on the "male" side there's examples like howitzer, aileron, strafe and katana. I wonder if there's an effect here because loanwords are harder to learn?