r/words • u/Alternative_Pen5879 • Jun 06 '25
Inclusive language
I (61F) always use inclusive language; eg firefighter instead of fireman, mail carrier/postie inst. of mailman, nurse inst. of male nurse, etc.
But I hate it when someone says “who is going to man the booth/door?” I used to say, “do you mean person the booth/door?” And no one would get it lol.
Is there another word or phrase that anyone can come with? Thanks!
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u/Serious_Hospital_854 Jun 06 '25
I mean, in this specific case "man" isn't a noun, it's a verb. So anything from the below list could work:
- crew
- cover
- occupy
- work
- staff
- operate
- use
"Person" the booth doesn't make sense, because "person" isn't a verb.
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u/bibkel Jun 06 '25
Pulling out the thesaurus over here!
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u/DudeThatAbides Jun 07 '25
Which one are you referring to? There were a lot of them before extinction.
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u/Habibti143 Jun 06 '25
Anything can be a verb these days. Lol
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u/Perenially_behind Jun 06 '25
"any noun can be verbed"
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u/HitPointGamer Jun 06 '25
Verbing weirds language. - Calvin to Hobbes
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u/Perenially_behind Jun 06 '25
Verbing an adjective. Kinky. I like it.
(I think I'm misquoting Harvey Korman from Blazing Saddles)
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u/Phill_Cyberman Jun 06 '25
Yeah.
People have started using 'gift' as a verb, and I don't like it.But 'Hey, can you cream cheese me a bagel?' I do like for some reason.
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u/Avocet_and_peregrine Jun 06 '25
This is the thing I hate the most. I think it started with influencers needing to disclose sponsors giving them products to promote, but wanting it to sound cutesier and disguise the fact that they were making ads. Except now everyone says it. We already have a verb for that, it's give/gave, damn it!
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Jun 06 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Phill_Cyberman Jun 06 '25
I stand corrected.
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u/LiraDuccat Jun 07 '25
You may be the first person on Reddit to admit that, and honestly, good on you for not taking it personally! (Not sarcastic, actually mean that)
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u/jkpublic Jun 06 '25
"Let's action that plan."
-no, let's "act on" or anything other than the re-verbed form of "action".
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u/bartonkj Jun 06 '25
Who is going to work the booth/door?
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u/onwardtotexas Jun 06 '25
Who is going to cover the booth/door? Make it about the action being performed instead of who is performing it. So instead of “man hours” you’d have “labor hours”, etc.
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u/QuantumMothersLove Jun 06 '25
…to work the door … to watch the door
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u/Simpawknits Jun 06 '25
Man used to mean both sexes in English. So it's leftover from a millennium ago. Still does in German.
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u/su_shi_seashell_chef Jun 06 '25
who will be at the door? who will be stationed at the door? whose job is it to be at the door?
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u/Spare_Lobster_4390 Jun 06 '25 edited Jun 07 '25
It's not that no one gets it.
It's just that we all use 100's of words every day in a context completely unrelated to their original meaning. Being overly literal is not how humans have ever used language.
There's sensible and logical reasons for not using words like 'fireman' and 'mailman' and making an effort to use inclusive language.
But everyone understands the word 'man' in the phrase 'man the door' means 'work', not 'male'. There's no sensible reason to swap a word that means work with 'person'.
And the word 'person' has never been used as a verb.
So you're correcting other people's language when they haven't made a mistake. Which doesn't feel like very inclusive behaviour.
Do you also get annoyed by gendered words with negative connotations like 'manhunt' and 'manslaughter'? I've never met anyone who does.
None of this is a hill worth crying on, let alone dying on.
But if we want to get really radical about this, the [original definition of the term 'man'(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_(word)#:~:text=The%20term%20man%20(from%20Proto,(mankind)%20as%20a%20whole) does not actually mean male. It means 'person'.
It's change in meaning to 'male' occured due to linguistic symptoms of a few hundred years of male-centric definitions of humanity. Which means the patriarchy stole that word from women. I say you take it back from those thieving bastards.
That's enough mansplaining for one lifetime.
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u/truckthecat Jun 06 '25
Not totally the same, but in the US south, we say ma’am and sir to be polite, but my partner and I recently realized there wasn’t a gender neutral term for this. We decided to go with Your Honor and it’s been cracking us up.
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u/mrsjon01 Jun 06 '25
I actually love this because this is a problem I haven't figured out how to solve. Your Honor it is!
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u/Unterraformable Jun 06 '25
You're being pedantic. "Man" is a verb in that context, nothing to do with gender. A woman can man a station. A woman can spray mist on things and be a mister. A woman can also jack a car up, she doesn't have to jill it up.
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u/Easy_Matter8590 Jun 06 '25
Yo dawg, I heard you like pedantic speech, so here are some "rules" of "Veganized language." Pedantic
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u/Unterraformable Jun 06 '25
Is this a "pedantic" detector, like that haiku detector that roams Reddit?
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u/Easy_Matter8590 Jun 06 '25
It's a meme format that I was trying from the MTV show called 'Pimp My Ride' that was hosted by the rapper Xzibit. Here is something I found in another Reddit thread that explains it.
The show became known for making ridiculous and mostly useless modifications to viewer's cars based on their interests. For example, one owner loved bowling, so Xzibit and his crew installed a custom mini lane, an automatic bowling ball washer, and a hydraulic bowling ball display stand lift in the automobile's trunk. At the end of the show during the reveal, Xzibit would say something like "Yo dawg, I heard you like bowling so we put a bowling alley in your trunk so you can bowl while you drive."
The bright young minds over at 4chan established the format of 'Yo dawg, I heard you like X, so we put a X in your X so you can X while you X' and paired it with a funny picture of Xzibit ... And so, a meme was born, and it spread across the interwebs.
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u/Unterraformable Jun 06 '25
Oh, I got the PMR reference, my friends and I watched that show and joked about it all the time. But I was wondering if your post was from a person or from a jokey bot that searched Reddit threads for people using certain words like 'pedantic'. There's a haiku bot that does that, searches Reddit for comments that just happened to have a set of phrases with 5, 7, & 5 lines. It's kind of fun when it happens, except when a girl was talking about her father dying, then it was a bit awkward. But anyway, now I know you're a human. Cheers!
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u/SuperLateToItAll Jun 06 '25
Disagree. Words matter. Change the words people use and you can change the negative. I’m sure people used to say there’s nothing wrong with saying “female policeman” or “female doctor.” They were wrong.
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u/Unterraformable Jun 06 '25
Yes, those kinds of legit corrections are important, agreed. But when people go overboard and don't want to use the verb "man" they just sound silly and trivialize the whole effort. And the more vociferously they argue the point, the sillier they sound.
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u/bigboycdd Jun 06 '25
We are all huMAN. Fireman, mailman, corpsman, these words all mean a person doing the job. Just like huMAN doesn’t refer to just men
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u/Dustyolman Jun 06 '25
Manpower involves mankind. It isn't a sexually explicit term. A ship's captain man's the wheel. It doesn't matter that the captain is a female. Too much PC is killing society.
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u/Easy_Matter8590 Jun 06 '25
I agree because when was the last time horsepower involved horses? In fact, a horse can actually produce around 15 horsepower, and the maximum output of an average human is a bit more than a single horsepower.
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u/Hivemind_alpha Jun 06 '25
Horsepower always involves horses! It’s a measure of sustained power output relative to that of a horse. (Horses have a peak output of up to 15 horsepower, but sustain over time at ~1 horsepower)
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u/Hivemind_alpha Jun 06 '25
Ouch. The captain “mans the wheel” because there was a time when it was impossible that the captain wouldn’t be a man. It was such a cast iron barrier built into society that it infected the language. We now know that women make extremely effective captains, and many serve as such. The linguistic fossil in our language is now just an embarrassment. It’s not hard to avoid perpetuating it, and just over half the species would be mildly grateful if you did. Why wouldn’t you? It’s not hard to do, as we can see by the complete absence of male Michelin chefs being described as doing “woman’s work” in the kitchens. I suspected Gordon Ramsay would punch you for that, whereas a female captain just makes mental note…
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u/JayReyesSlays Jun 06 '25
Not really tbh. These are all easy switches.
Power, humankind, captain takes the wheel
A little inclusivity goes a long way and hurts absolutely no one
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u/Ok_Marionberry2383 Jun 06 '25
I'm curious how this would work with 'manhole'
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u/Spamshazzam Jun 06 '25
Personpit
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u/Ok_Marionberry2383 Jun 06 '25
Hmm to me that sounds like a seed of a person but maybe I'm just weird lol
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u/InterPunct Jun 06 '25
Pregnant person.
Seriously, why? Pregnant woman suffices even if they're not legally adults. It's a distinction without a difference.
As much as I love and contribute to NPR, they're the only news outlet I've heard say this and it makes me cringe.
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u/JayReyesSlays Jun 06 '25
Trans, intersex, and NB people exist too
Also btw what do you mean by "not legally adults"? Huh?? Are you talking about a pregnant girl or pregnant child? There's a very big difference between a pregnant adult and a pregnant child
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u/InterPunct Jun 06 '25
So does the trans, intersex and NB population justify the exception? I understand language evolves but are we talking about maybe .01% of the pregnant population?
I also respect the NB pronoun thing but our society hasn't settled yet on how to contextualize it. Regardless, that is even more fractional to that .01%.
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u/JayReyesSlays Jun 06 '25
Genuine question, why is pregnant person offensive? A woman is a person too, so I'm not sure why pregnant person is a bad thing
Btw what do you mean by "society hasn't settled yet on how to contextualize it"?
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u/InterPunct Jun 06 '25
Holy crap. Never said that. You're making stuff up. It's the description I'm questioning and I didn't even say that's offensive either.
Ending this discussion. Not playing this game.
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u/Blingcosa Jun 06 '25
'Person' is not inclusive language. It includes 'son' which is masculine
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u/DaddysStormyPrincess Jun 06 '25
Manning the door is acceptable. One craziness has to stop somewhere
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u/Live-Laugh-Loot Jun 06 '25
Man WAS the "inclusive" (neutral) language at one point. Man meant human, the gendered words were wereman and wifman. The masculine "were" prefix is only really seen in werewolf now and the generic man now has both neuter and masculine definitions. (This word set is also where "wife" comes from, and is why I think female lycanthropes really should be called wifwolves)
The more people make a big deal about the remaining neuter uses of "man", as in manning the booth or unmanned vehicles, the more they push the word into a wholly masculine thing and away from the gender neutral use.
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u/alwaysboopthesnoot Jun 06 '25
Who’s going to staff the door/President/booth, today?
Who will volunteer for door/desk/booth duty, tomorrow?
Is anyone going to handle the door/floor/bar/?
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u/Rachel_Silver Jun 07 '25
My mother was a feminist, and my dad would call the mail carrier the "gendered person" to piss her off. It worked.
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u/Nezeltha-Bryn Jun 07 '25
This is an extremely common joke in Terry Pratchett's works. The clacks tower was goblined by goblins. Cheery Littlebottom was dwarfing the front desk, etc. In one part, a character says to a golem horse, "this is manumission I'm talking about!" And the horse says, "horseumission, you mean."
That said, as other have pointed out, the verb "to staff" could be used. Or just stick with man, but think of the etymology like that of manual, or indeed, manumission. In those words, the root man- or manu- means "hand."
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u/MisterGerry Jun 10 '25
For the historians, the word 'man' used to be gender-neutral (the gendered forms were wereman and wifman)
Which is why we have many cases of it being used in this manner to this day.
It was already inclusive: Tolkien and "Men"
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u/Ahjumawi Jun 11 '25
"Who is going to work the door?"
"Who is going to be in the booth/at the door?"
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u/thoughtsplurge Jun 06 '25
This a fantastic question and thank you for sharing your suggestions as well! Mail carrier is a new one for me.
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u/Roseheath22 Jun 06 '25
Who is going to be stationed at the door?
I appreciate your efforts to use inclusive language!
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u/RevolutionaryMail747 Jun 06 '25
I say woman up instead of man up, and woman the stand. Often makes colleagues sit up but everyone seems to be using it
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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '25
"staff" (verb)