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Anonymous Posted 10 years ago
Grammar

blond (masc) v blonde (fem)

Hello,

If males have blond hair and females blonde hair, how should this word be written when it refers to both sexes at the same time? E.g. "In the hair-styling class, only one female and one male had naturally blond / blonde hair."

Maybe use the gender of the word closest to blond(e) to decide its spelling?

So:
"In the hair-styling class, only one female and one male had blond hair."
"In the hair-styling class, only one male and one female had blonde hair."

I've just read in Collins that either spelling is acceptable as the distinction, blond = male and blonde = female, is not, unlike in French, a rigidly enforced grammar rule, but what say you?

Thanks

Peter Emotion: smile
  

Top answer

We don't want sexist language, so your question is an important one. If there were no indication of the gender of the person who is being describe, you could sound sexist by using "blond" as a default term. The blond individual also had blue eyes.

— Englishmaven

  • We don't want sexist language, so your question is an important one.
  • If there were no indication of the gender of the person who is being describe, you could sound sexist by using "blond" as a default term.
  • The blond individual also had blue eyes.
  • But it turns out that despite trying to avoid sexist language, we wind up being sexist in any event.
  • In the US, people use actress, tigress, and waitress less and less.
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4 Answers
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We don't want sexist language, so your question is an important one. If there were no indication of the gender of the person who is being describe, you could sound sexist by using "blond" as a default term.

The blond individual also had blue eyes.

But it turns out that despite trying to avoid sexist language, we wind up being sexist in any event. In the US, people use actress
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EnglishmavenActor, tiger, and server have become the norm regardless of the gender of the person in question. This poses the problem that was initially being remedied. The language has defaulted to the masculine term.
No. 'Actor' has simply been recognised as meaning 'person who acts' rather than 'man who acts' There is nothing inherently male/masculine about
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AnonymousI've just read in Collins that either spelling is acceptable as the distinction, blond = male and blonde = female, is not, unlike in French, a rigidly enforced grammar rule, but what say you?
I still prefer the noun forms '(a) blond' and '(a) blonde', but I always use 'blond' as the adjective (A blonde has blond hair) — on the rare occasions I
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fivejedjonWho has any authority to say it 'should be 'his/her'? Singular denotation of 'they/them/their' has been used and accepted by all but self-appointed prescriptive style-guide writers and their followers for over six centuries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
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