"Taliswoman"...

S

Sarkus

Hippomonstrosesquippedalo phobe
Valued Senior Member
Was just watching a women's rugby match, listening to sports commentators (never generally known for being the smartest people on the planet), and someone was referred to as a "taliswoman", rather than a talisman.

This irked me slightly because, as far as I am aware, talisman has nothing to do with gender, and comes from the Arabic for a religious rite, and so exchanging -man for -woman seems just a ridiculous thing to do. One person thought that we should be fortunate that female commentators are not referring to themselves as com-women-tators! :)

I'm aware that for the vast majority of words ending in -man it makes sense to use -woman for the female equivalent: chairwoman, spokeswoman, policewoman, etc. But this is because the -man implies a person taking part in the activity, etc. So using the appropriate gender makes complete sense.
But "talisman" isn't based on that principle, and is just coincidental that it ends in -man.

Thoughts?

Have you heard any other efforts to crow-bar gender equality into words where it etymologically has no place?
Should we just accept it as an example of our language adapting to the times?

:)
 
Sarkus said:
Have you heard any other efforts to crow-bar gender equality into words where it etymologically has no place?
Should we just accept it as an example of our language adapting to the times?

:)
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This from the '70s(?)
hissicane instead of hurricane

accept by ignoring
 
Sarkus said:
Was just watching a women's rugby match, listening to sports commentators (never generally known for being the smartest people on the planet), and someone was referred to as a "taliswoman", rather than a talisman.

This irked me slightly because, as far as I am aware, talisman has nothing to do with gender, and comes from the Arabic for a religious rite, and so exchanging -man for -woman seems just a ridiculous thing to do. One person thought that we should be fortunate that female commentators are not referring to themselves as com-women-tators! :)

I'm aware that for the vast majority of words ending in -man it makes sense to use -woman for the female equivalent: chairwoman, spokeswoman, policewoman, etc. But this is because the -man implies a person taking part in the activity, etc. So using the appropriate gender makes complete sense.
But "talisman" isn't based on that principle, and is just coincidental that it ends in -man.

Thoughts?

Have you heard any other efforts to crow-bar gender equality into words where it etymologically has no place?
Should we just accept it as an example of our language adapting to the times?

:)
Click to expand...
There have been a few, the most absurd I know of being "herstory", for a feminist version of history, but I'm not aware of any that have gained any significant traction in common usage.
 
exchemist said:
There have been a few, the most absurd I know of being "herstory", for a feminist version of history, but I'm not aware of any that have gained any significant traction in common usage.
Click to expand...

Do you think some female out there is contemplating changing

Dictionary

to a female version?

:)
 
Sarkus said:
Positive dumbing down is simplifying important complex scientific matters so that more people can understand them, for example. Trying to be PC with a word that doesn't deserve it is just... dumb. ;)
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Our local newspersons have converted "homeless people" to "people experiencing homelessness". I don't know if that makes it more pleasant.

I suppose fat people are people experiencing obesity. Or maybe our news-people are just experiencing stupidity.
 
sideshowbob said:
Our local newspersons have converted "homeless people" to "people experiencing homelessness". I don't know if that makes it more pleasant.
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I think there's an argument for that, referring to it as a possibly transient situation rather than a defining characteristic, etc.
I suppose fat people are people experiencing obesity.
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"People experiencing the inability to adequately control a healthy calorific intake" is probably better. ;) Of which I am bordering upon!! :/
Or maybe our news-people are just experiencing stupidity.
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:D
 
Sarkus said:
Was just watching a women's rugby match, listening to sports commentators (never generally known for being the smartest people on the planet), and someone was referred to as a "taliswoman", rather than a talisman. [...]
Click to expand...

taliswoman: A talisman in the form of a female figure.​

It seems to be a nickname which some (CNN at least) gave to Patricia Garcia a few years ago:

Patricia Garcia: Spanish rugby's taliswoman
https://www.cnn.com/2017/02/02/sport/gallery/patricia-garcia-spain-rugby/index.html

Was it because there are taliswoman artifacts that look athletic in form? Most of the oldest that I recall appeared to be fertility objects, and reflected that with respect to the figurine's shape. Yet a small niche of contemporary ones might be enlightened or "mesomorphic female" oriented, instead.

I don't know the context in the specific rugby match you saw (is Garcia still playing?), but it could be an adjectival expression still lingering around in the sport, applied to other players when they do something "exciting".

Doesn't rule out that it is a public attempt to appear ideologically pious to the Woke crowd (i.e., receive approval ratings on social media from Leftangelicals). But there could be a less dastardly explanation, not involving virtue signaling, stemming from the above.

CAUTIONARY NOTE: There could be instances of sarcasm sprinkled in this post, not indicated by lazy or inference-depriving emoticons.
 
foghorn said:
I think it's a matter of 'seen' to be 'correct' rather than true origins. Maybe you could say it's positive dumbing down.:)
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I think it's also a question of how seriously one chooses to take it. A few decades back, some serious folks got all twitterpated because some wymmyn said something about femstruation.

The term "mansplain" was not yet in circulation, but hoo-boy, watching them wag their etymologies was, well, they weren't so much outliers, but a vanguard.
 
Fair point.
I know new words are developed all the time, many that never become mainstream, and the English language is fluid and ever evolving... but the etymological side just... it feels like running your hand over a nice smooth surface and suddenly brushing against sandpaper. Just feels... odd. :)
 
I have no problem with 'Taliswoman' - and no person should.

As a group, men can afford to be magnanimous about gender-imbalanced issues.
Even if you think it's excessively "PC" - so what? The pendulum has long swung in favour of men. Let it swing back.

It sure as hell can't hurt to be reminded regularly how sexist our society has been, and how far we have yet to go.

To borrow a phrase: "More consideration for others does not mean less for you. It's not pie."
 
Sarkus said:
… but the etymological side just... it feels like running your hand over a nice smooth surface and suddenly brushing against sandpaper. Just feels... odd.
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Much of this, I've found, will pass. Think of it this way: Everybody ought to have been able to laugh at "femhole". But that's the thing; it couldn't just be an access portal; it just had to be a hole for a man.

But among the things we were supposed to laugh at, a few decades back, when Beard and Cerf published their dictionary and handbook, were "ableism" and "ageism". This was, of course, at a time when people laughed at the idea of a "controlled descent into terrain" meaning "plane crash". Which is also the same lack of distinction that drove a generation's worth of derisive references to getting sued because coffee is hot.

These decades later, I think of it this way: When I was young, the joke about how to tell when a politician was lying answered, "Their lips are moving." In the time since, someone, somewhere, decided this wasn't really a problem, and now people can't tell the difference between the joke and the actual political party whose bread and butter is actually lying. Back then, we accepted that campaign promises weren't coming true for any number of reasons, but just don't utterly bullshit us. Now we freak out about campaign promises but let people bullshit us every freaking day, and the actual worrisome part of that seems to be the number of people who can't tell the difference.

But if, for instance, it wasn't really so long ago that someone asked me about a convoluted version of womyn/wymmyn, the thing is that I remember when that discussion happened sometime, decades ago, and if I can't tell you much more than remembering that it happened, it's because between thirty years ago and, oh, say, two↗, it just never really came up. And it still doesn't, at least not in any substantial way. But over the years, when some chatter would reach me, it was some sort of antifeminist complaint pretending wymmyn were stealing the language and culture and taking over the world, or something thereabout.

Also, "com-woman-tators" is too much effort. Maybe you think "analist", er, I mean, "analyst", is too obvious, but I've watched atheists and others add letters to shorthand over the years just so they can be seen putting even more effort into annoying Christians. Subtlety, too, is a relativistic market value.

• • •​

RainbowSingularity said:
Gynictionary
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Really?
 
Tiassa said:
...people laughed at the idea of a "controlled descent into terrain" meaning "plane crash".
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AKA "petrobraking".


Tiassa said:
Which is also the same lack of distinction that drove a generation's worth of derisive references to getting sued because coffee is hot.
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This story got such a bad rap. It did not go down at all the way media would have us believe.

"...the company had received more than 700 reports of people burned by McDonald's coffee to varying degrees of severity, and had settled claims arising from scalding injuries for more than $500,000.[13] McDonald's quality control manager, Christopher Appleton, testified that this number of injuries was insufficient to cause the company to evaluate its practices..."
 
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