Re: Re[2]: Killer

Subject: Re: Re[2]: Killer
From: "Wayne J. Douglass" <wayned -at- VERITY -dot- COM>
Date: Thu, 14 Nov 1996 15:26:55 -0800

At 04:47 PM 11/14/96 -0800, Naomi Kritzer wrote:

>Steve Evanina said that he received the following info from a connector
>manufacturer and it sounds like a good choice to use instead of the
>male/female descriptors.

> "Identification of the sex of a connector can vary. The side with
> the pins is male and the side with socket contacts would be female.
> Using "male" and "female" is sometimes considered "politically
> incorrect." In most cases we say either plug and receptacle housing
> or plug and jack. Something like that can keep you from offending
> anyone."

Alas, the connector manufacturer only confuses the issue by referring to the
"sex" of the connector. A connector can be said to have a "sex" only by
analogy. And in English, connector, plug, or socket do not have gender
either, from a linguistic point of view.

To further muddy the waters, consider that the French terms for plug and
socket have the opposite gender that one would expect:

PLUG: prise (f) de courant
SOCKET: douille (m)

--Wayne Douglass
===================================================
Verity, Inc. Email: wayned -at- verity -dot- com
894 Ross Drive Telephone: 408-542-2139
Sunnyvale, CA 94089 Facsimile: 408-542-2040
===================================================


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