Posted on 10/26/2016 10:58:04 AM PDT by re_tail20
Have you ever typed "female" into an online thesaurus?
Heather O'Banion did, and the results outraged her.
"I am a student in graphic design, and while doing research for a persona on one of my projects, I wondered what other words were synonymous with the word female, so I went to Thesaurus.com and typed it in," O'Banion emailed the Tribune recently. "See what comes up? ... I'm pretty (expletive) sure the last thing you or your 10-year-old daughter wants to see at the top are words like babe, bag, broad, doll or little woman."
Sure enough, after some synonymous adjectives ("fertile," "maternal," "effeminate"), the first in an alphabetical list of nouns related to female is "broad."
Under "broad," you get "babe, bimbo, chick, dame, dish, doll, doxy, female, floozy, gal, girl, honey, lady, lassie, miss, moll, skirt, sweet thing, tootsie."
(So, teachers: If you find yourself reading a current events essay in the coming weeks about our first lassie president, you'll know why.)
The related words for male?
Several adjectives ("macho," "potent," "paternal," "virile"), followed by a noun: "guy."
Under "guy," you get "bird, bloke, boy, brother, bud, buddy, cat, chap, chum, dude, feller, fellow, gentleman, individual, person."
Which sound a little 1920s. ("Hey, chap, throw on a waistcoat, and let's see what the other blokes are up to at the speak-easy.") But hardly outrage-inducing.
I checked in with Thesaurus.com, which launched in 1995 and attracts more than 70 million users per month. The media contact sent me a statement from Jane Solomon, lexicographer at Dictionary.com (Thesaurus.com's sister site).
"After the first initial block of synonyms, the rest of the page is programmatically generated to give users an abundance of options,"...
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
First-world problem ...
Classic “snowflake” inability to deal with reality. If the truth hurts -— step away from the thesaurus.
This is a the purpose of a thesaurus. It will provide synonyms and near synonyms for you. Some may be pejorative. It’s not an endorsement. I am sure some entries for male could be interpreted as put downs as well.
Somebody should explain to her what a thesaurus is.
Don’t get caught up in wordage. The thesaurus reflects what has been the cultural norm. I suppose that means she wants to revise history and pretend these were never common terms.
Note: The reference to Male Adjectives; As far as I know, “Bird” is a british term used to describe women, young attractive women in particular, NOT men. I’ve never heard it used that way.
What part of “it doesn’t matter” don’t these people get?
Thanks for posting. I had a good laugh, imagining Heather’s snowflake rage.
Once you get past ‘girl’ and ‘woman’ there aren’t many neutral synonyms for female. I could come up with distaff and lady, I suppose. But it’s broads, babes, and booty all the way down.
Looked up several Thesaurus references....Looks like you looked for a garbage site...
cougar....where’s cougar ????
MULIBROUS is in there ... if you want to look it up for fun.
If "broad" is good enough for Sinatra, it should be good enough for the rest of us. Embrace this term of endearment.
In the meantime: Refridge. Beer. Sammich. Thanks.
What a disappointment for a 10 year old.
Ho?
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