“Whistling girls and cackling hens always come to some bad end,” said people in the olden days regarding transgressive women. A variation on this saying pops up in a 1911 book called Folk-Lore of Women by one Reverend Thomas Thiselton...
Young women used to be warned that a lady’s name should appear in the newspaper only three times: at her birth, upon her marriage, and at her death. In much the same way, the admonition “Don’t get your name all up in the...
Why do department stores label their infants’ section “Baby” instead of “Babies’” à la “Men’s” or “Women’s”? For one, the Baby department includes more than just clothes;...
Is the term “ladies” an offensive way to refer to a group of women? As a recent discussion on Ask Metafilter revealed, many interpret it as outdated, condescending, or patronizing. The hosts conclude it all depends on context. This is...
If you go to a department store, you’ll see the Men’s department, the Women’s department, and the Children’s department. So why do so many stores have a department that’s called simply “Baby”? Grant...
Databases like the Google Books Corpus can also be used to follow text over time. For example, as the women’s suffrage movement grew around 1910, words relating to women’s rights grew in popularity and frequency of usage. This is part of...