Prithee, Why So Pale And Wrong?
There's a very strange usage in Slate.com today and I just don't know what to make of it.
Here's the sentence, from a slide show, amusingly titled "TV's Aryan Sisterhood", about artificially-blonde TV newscasters. (Click on the slide-show link and then head over to page 4 of 9.)
We associate blond with youth, she writes, because the hair of babies and that of young children tends to become wan and darken with age.
Now, "wan" means "pale". Specifically, it means "unnaturally pale: sickly", so what is this sentence telling us--or, more precisely, what exactly does it think it's telling us?
I wish I knew. I'd like to interpret it as meaning "the hair of the young is wan (that is, pale) and becomes darker with age", but that's clearly a stretch, not to mention a misuse of the word, because "wan" implies an unhealthy pallor. The writer evidently thinks that "wan" means "less attractive" or "less delicate" or something along those lines. I think. I honestly can't quite figure it out. But whatever it is, it's wrong.
If I were being really, really picky, which is pretty much my raison d'etre, I would also have to say that, like it or not, "blonde" still refers to women and "blond" to men, as these words were originally French and therefore take gender markers, and both words have entered the English language and might as well be used correctly. "Careful writers still distinguish between masculine blond and feminine blonde", Answers.com tells us rightly (although it then notes that "the tendency [is] for North Americans to use the masculine in either case, and other English-speakers to use the feminine in either case"). The slide show uses "blond" uniformly, which accords with Answers.com's contention and, I suppose, is better than using both words and mixing them up randomly.
Here's the sentence, from a slide show, amusingly titled "TV's Aryan Sisterhood", about artificially-blonde TV newscasters. (Click on the slide-show link and then head over to page 4 of 9.)
We associate blond with youth, she writes, because the hair of babies and that of young children tends to become wan and darken with age.
Now, "wan" means "pale". Specifically, it means "unnaturally pale: sickly", so what is this sentence telling us--or, more precisely, what exactly does it think it's telling us?
I wish I knew. I'd like to interpret it as meaning "the hair of the young is wan (that is, pale) and becomes darker with age", but that's clearly a stretch, not to mention a misuse of the word, because "wan" implies an unhealthy pallor. The writer evidently thinks that "wan" means "less attractive" or "less delicate" or something along those lines. I think. I honestly can't quite figure it out. But whatever it is, it's wrong.
If I were being really, really picky, which is pretty much my raison d'etre, I would also have to say that, like it or not, "blonde" still refers to women and "blond" to men, as these words were originally French and therefore take gender markers, and both words have entered the English language and might as well be used correctly. "Careful writers still distinguish between masculine blond and feminine blonde", Answers.com tells us rightly (although it then notes that "the tendency [is] for North Americans to use the masculine in either case, and other English-speakers to use the feminine in either case"). The slide show uses "blond" uniformly, which accords with Answers.com's contention and, I suppose, is better than using both words and mixing them up randomly.
posted by pyramus | 7:37 AM
2 Comments:
Off-topic, but I wanted to put this on the post at the top. I was thinking of sending my comment and your response below about English and its hardness to Mr. Hat over at Languagehat. Would that be okay? I don't want to send it and, God willing, him do a post about it without getting your permission to share your words.
You could have posted it as a comment to any posting: I get an e-mail copy of every comment to my blog so I don't miss anything--so I can respond to the real comments and delete the spam.
Sure, go ahead and send it to him. I don't think I've said anything particularly profound, so I don't know what he'll do with it, but be my guest anyway. (He's read my blog at least once, a while back: I wrote an entry about something he said about Chinese pronunciationand transliteration in English, and he responded in a comment. So he knows I exist, for what that's worth.)
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