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> That's an abbreviation of 'the female of the species' which is essentially An interesting intuition, do you have anything to back it up? > I don't have to l
by WaxProlix 4y ago
> That's an abbreviation of 'the female of the species' which is essentially
An interesting intuition, do you have anything to back it up?
> I don't have to like it.
Now that I empathize with, but I don't think there's much to be done in this case.
- OJFord 4y ago> An interesting intuition, do you have anything to back it up? It (unlike the shortening) is grammatical, and a common enough phrase to have a Wikipedia disambiguation page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Female_of_the_Species https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Female_of_the_Species
- WaxProlix 4y agoSure, do you have anything to back up your intuition that this is just a shortening of one phrase? Where would you find this 'shortening' acceptable, and where would you not? "A female will find multiple mates in spring" "The male burrows deep into the ground in the winter and begins to hibernate" These seem fine to me and are not strict shortenings of "The Female of the Species".