Ladies and gentlemen (salutation)

Ladies and gentlemen is a salutation and irreversible binomial used in the field of entertainment, sports and theatre since the 19th century.[1] The salutation is unlike most English-language gendered irreversible binomials which typically place the male term before the female term.[1][2] Before the 19th century, the terms "gentil men and ladies" and "gentlemen and ladies" were more common, and according to prevalence in 18th-century newspapers and usage in the Oxford English Dictionary, the shift in popularity to the form "ladies and gentlemen" occurred during the late 18th century.[1]

Since the 1950s, male-first irreversible binomials have become less fixed (i.e. the male and female term are more freely interchanged) but the usage of female-first irreversible binomials has become more fixed.[3] The use of the fixed ordering has been described as unnecessarily gendered, and binary (see gender binary).[3][4]

"Ladies and gentlemen" is also an example of a merism: the phrase does not refer to only those who are ladies or gentlemen, but refers to all people.[5]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 Hegarty, Peter (2013-12-18), "Ladies and gentlemen: Word order and gender in English", The Expression of Gender, De Gruyter, pp. 69–86, doi:10.1515/9783110307337.69, ISBN 978-3-11-030660-6, retrieved 2023-12-22
  2. ↑ Francis, W. N.; Baron, Dennis (March 1989). "Grammar and Gender". Language. 65 (1): 3. doi:10.2307/414859. ISSN 0097-8507. JSTOR 414859.
  3. 1 2 Motschenbacher, Heiko (2013-07-30). "Gentlemen before Ladies? A Corpus-Based Study of Conjunct Order in Personal Binomials". Journal of English Linguistics. 41 (3): 212–242. doi:10.1177/0075424213489993. ISSN 0075-4242.
  4. ↑ Bierema, Laura L. (2020-10-01). "Ladies and gentlemen, your implicit bias is showing: gender hegemony and its impact on HRD research and practice". Human Resource Development International. 23 (5): 473–490. doi:10.1080/13678868.2020.1809254. ISSN 1367-8868.
  5. ↑ Forsyth, Mark (2013). The Elements of Eloquence. p. 28. ISBN 9780425276181.
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