Those philosophers are close but fail to win the banana.
Paraphrase
“The major difference between men and women is that women have a vocabulary almost totally devoid of nouns. If a man is drying dishes while his wife washes them after dinner and asks, “Where does this cup go?’ he is expecting an answer like, ‘Put the cup on the second self of the left cupboard’. He wife replies, “Put that, there.” Which isn’t helpful at all.”
~ C.S. Lewis
"There are no servants here," said Mother Dimble, "and we all do the work. The women do it one day and the men the next. . . . What? . . . No, it's a very sensible arrangement. The Director's idea is that men and women can't do housework together without quarrelling. There's something in it. Of course it doesn't do to look at the cups too closely on the men's day, but on the whole we get along pretty well."
"But why should they quarrel?" asked Jane.
"Different methods, my dear. Men can't help in a job, you know. They can be induced to do it: not to help while you're doing it. At least it makes them grumpy."
"The cardinal difficulty," said MacPhee, "in collaboration between the sexes is that women speak a language without nouns. If two men are doing a bit of work one will say to the other, 'Put this bowl inside the bigger bowl which you'll find on the top shelf of the green cupboard.' The female for this is 'Put that in the other one in there.' And then if you ask them 'in where?' they say 'in there of course.' There is consequently a phatic hiatus." He pronounced this so as to rhyme with "get at us."
"There's your tea now," said Ivy Maggs, "and I'll go and get you a piece of cake, which is more than you deserve. And when you've had it you can go upstairs and talk about nouns for the rest of the evening."
"Not about nouns: by means of nouns," said MacPhee; but Mrs. Maggs had already left the room.
That describes my wife. I often have to ask her the subject of the sentences she just spoke to me.
“Maybe they should get some.”
Who should get some what?
If that ain’t the truth.
I can corroborate that!
When I am busy with a task, and ask, "Where are the scissors?", I don't want my wife to reply, "Where I put them after I finished darning the socks," or "In the d'Or box next to the Queen Anne table," (what the heck is a "d'Or" box or a "Queen Anne" table, anyway?).
I want her to reply, "Here, let me put them into your hands."
Regards,
Demonstrating beyond a shadow of a doubt that Lewis’ relationship with Paddy Moore’s mother was non-sexual.