Sheenglishing heenglish; English and women titles (part four)

Are English dictionaries suggesting that women are more complicated than men? The lower case and the upper case descriptions of M/madam suggest that women are inconsistent beings and should therefore be treated as such. Is that really true? If it is true, should the language in which women are described also add fuel to the flame of linguistic oppression?

People even draw weird semantic associations to ‘woman,’ adjudging it to have morphologically emanated from ‘woe unto man,’ ‘woe man,’ or ‘a man who has a womb’ (womb man). Why can we not have a polite English word for a woman without a weighty morphological dependency on the word ‘man’? Sever ‘man’ from ‘woman’ and you have ‘wo,’ which would phonologically end up as ‘woe.’ The same thing happens when ‘Lady’ is torn asunder. ‘Lad’ and ‘y.’ You kill the ‘Lady’ thereby leaving us with ‘Lad’ which is the English word for ‘a boy or young man.’

Lady is such a beautiful word to describe a woman. It does not have any negative meaning except when the speaker or writer intentionally places it in the country of bad words or sinisterly manipulates its structure.

Merriam Webster says she is ‘a woman of superior position,’ Oxford calls her “a courteous, decorous, or genteel woman.’ Yet, there is something unsettling about pluralising ‘Lady.’ You may easily tell your boss ‘I am going to the ladies.’ This does not mean you are going to see some high class, women of honour and character. It does mean you are going to the toilet. ‘Ladies’ is a word for ‘a women’s public toilet.’ It is also known as ‘ladies room.’ That is why you often find the word ‘ladies’ on the doors of public toilets.

Note that only women can use ‘the ladies.’ Men use ‘the gents.’ Why is the word for men’s public restroom not ‘men’ or ‘menies?’ ‘Gents’ is formed from the idea of ‘gentlemen.’ It’s linguistic disparity to use such a fine word as ‘gents’ for men’s public toilets and just pluralise such a beautiful word as ‘lady’ in order to make a toilet out of the meaning.

The morphology of the word ‘madam’ seems to have everything wrong with it as it is a combination of the adjective ‘mad’ and the first person singular present of ‘be’ which is ‘am.’ ‘Mad’ is used to describe someone who is mentally ill or unreasonable while ‘am’ expresses the state of being or existence of a person or thing.

Being called a ‘madam’ could therefore dangerously refer to the state of irrationality, psychological illness, extreme emotionalism etc. One could even make a sentence of ‘madam’ by just inserting the first person singular pronoun ‘I’ and reordering the structure thus ‘I am mad.’ This would then lead many people to believe that all ‘madams’ are mad people. Well, maybe not true. It could just be Heenglish displaying its mad systems of meaning.

Written by Omidire Idowu.

Omidire Idowu is a professional editor and proofreader whose works have graced prominent pages of several online magazines. Get him at noblelifeliver@gmail.com or @IAmEagleHeart