"Language with all its defects contains a good deal of stored insight and experience. If you begin by flouting it, it has a way of avenging itself later on."

--C S. Lewis.

"If words are to have any value to us, we ought to respect the way that they have been used historically."

--Steven Weinberg

(physicist).

"It is hardly plausible to think that tinkering with words will do anything to enhance respect for women among people who do not have any."

-- Jacques Barzun.

The following (as well as the above) was inspired (or provoked) by the "Unimportant Thoughts" (Feb. 3) of fellow columnist Carolyn Thornton. (Why haven't the Femi-Nazis gone after "fellow?"

Surely they wouldn't be deterred by the mere fact that it derives, like the much-reviled "niggardly," from the Old Norse: felagi, "comrade?") One trusts Carolyn regards one, who's merely answering the questions she asked, as a comrade.

Carolyn got off to a good start by "thinking about (gasp!) sex." One can only hope this means she stands firm with old H.W. Fowler: "'Gender' is a grammatical term only. To talk of persons or creatures of the masculine or feminine gender, meaning of the male or female sex, is either a jocularity (permissible or not according to context) or a blunder."

Of course, thanks to galloping feminism, babblers and scribblers are jocularly blundering all over the map. It's a combination of prissy shrinking from the word "sex" and a political axe-grinding effort to portray sex differences as social ("gender") not innate ("sex").

Nature is "Mother" and Time is "Father," Carolyn, because the earth is fecund, brings forth, like a woman; whereas time is ruled by the sky (the sun, etc.). The chthonous (earthly) deities of the ancients thus were female, the ouranian (heavenly) ones were male. Chronos (not to be confused with the Titan Cronus, Zeus's father) was the Greek god of time.

Indeed khronos in Greek means simply "time," and has given us "chronology," "chronicles," etc. Chronos from the first was portrayed as a white-bearded old man, who became our Father Time. Surely women wouldn't want to replace him with an equally decrepit female!

The traditional use of "she" for ships is also easily explained. As is another use Carolyn overlooked: Countries, too, are called "she," and even so personified, e.g. Britannia, Germania, "Alma Mater Italia" (our [cultural] mother Italy, quoting Will Durant), Mother Russia, and even America (no male "Americus"), often known by her other feminine name, Liberty.

This is because males are the chief actors in the human drama. A feminist complained of "Little House on the Prairie" because the men did everything, while the women just stood around looking worried.

Well, too bad, maybe, but c'est la vie! Even in today's feminized world, those we see in deadly-serious action (as in full combat gear in Iraq) are male.

And it's only natural for a man to think of and treat the things with which and for which he strives and cares as female. E.g. Carolyn also overlooked guns, which have been female since the famous English "Brown Bess" and the frontiersman's "Old Betsy."

Germans may have referred to the "Fatherland" and Romans to the "Patria" (fatherland), but in their hearts they were fighting for "her," not "him."

And seamen, especially on the old unwieldy, recalcitrant sailing ships, naturally thought of their labors as a kind of "wooing" of their vessels, with their unpredictable, often contrary, and therefore (to males) feminine characteristics. "Come on, now, darlin', hold the course!" Men in even dull trades like blacksmithing tend to feminize their tools, materials, and finished products. Because their work reminds them of that basic labor of courtship: coaxing the coy, unpredictable objective to do or become what the male desires it to do or be.

French nouns have gender, Carolyn tells us. Most languages do. But (remember Fowler) gender isn't sex. A masculine word may refer to a female referent, and vice versa. Languages also have a third, "neuter gender" (the human race doesn't, the gay lobby notwithstanding.) "It" is a neuter survival in English. Carolyn also overlooked "the mother tongue."

The feminists can give thanks that this writer's a dinosaur, soon to be extinct.

Then they can get down to mangling the language with no backtalk from here. But this writer plans to heed Lewis, Weinberg, Barzun, and Fowler (above) till they throw dirt in his face!

What a pity the Old English word for male died out: were, which survives only in werewolf and weregild (man-price), from the Latin vir, male, from which we get our "virile" and even "virtue." "I now pronounce you were and wife;" it's alliterative anyway!

But the dictionary still gives the first, primary definition of "man" as "a human being." That's good enough for this "were." Carolyn may "like this movement" (language-mangling in the specious, wrong-headed name of "equality") but it moves this fellow columnist to upchuck.

A recent regional history blated, "If a traveler were to arrive in St. Louis she would think ..."

The book had to be finished for review purposes, not thrown out the window, but the reader was instantly tipped off that he was holding a politically-correct ground axe.

Carolyn's perfectly free to refuse to "man" a booth if she pleases; but the freedom applies alike to the "were" of the species.

This one's never going to "staff" any booth, and if ever introduced as a "chairperson" (or even "chair") he's going to keep his seat! Or abscond! The "ladies" (to end on an insulting note) can be "chairs" or "staff" or "persons" to their hearts' content.

But this grouch is, and will be, a MAN. At least till "were" is revived.

In the old West, the greatest compliment to be bestowed on a woman was, "You'll make a hand." "Hand" was used in the sense of "man" or "fellow" (comrade).

And as an impatient Churchill angrily told the feminist Lady Astor, "In grammar, as in love, the male embraces the female!"