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Well, no, we say server, because server is gender-neutral. Compare steward/stewardess with flight attendant. And some servers will get mighty angry if you call

Well, no, we say server, because server is gender-neutral. Compare steward/stewardess with flight attendant. And some servers will get mighty angry if you call them a waitress. I don't necessarily think that response is justified when no offense is actually meant. But the point is that there has been an identifiable trend in our language towards moving away from gender-specific terms for roles that shouldn't otherwise have a relevance to gender. I'd argue this movement is overdue for epithets. I think "asshole," "asshat," "assclown," really anything in the venerable ass family, makes for an ideal gender-neutral epithet. We should use these more often! Edit: typo

gdwatson 14y ago
That's always seemed an odd quirk of the restaurant industry to me. Server to refer to a person sounds stilted to my ear; a server is a computer to me, but a waiter or a waitress is a person. So a sincere question: Why would someone be offended to be described as a waitress?
- deleted 14y ago
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youngtaff 14y ago
Server is a US thing (maybe AU, NZ too?), we don't use it in the UK. I find server to refer to a waitress and waiter a really odd term, almost de-humanising but that might just be a cultural difference.
- Draco6slayer 14y ago
  To be entirely honest, I've never heard server used in the US, and a few of my friends are waiters and waitresses.