Friends,
The word “draughtsman” and “draftsman” is originally a gender-neutral word referring to a person who draws. Those who access the Oxford English Dictionary can check the development and etymology of the word.
According to the OED, "In all the Germanic languages the word had the two senses ‘human being’ and ‘adult male human being’.” The word “draughtsman” was based on this first sense.
>> This is the root of the thread - Andrea Kantrowitz started it by asking
>> for a gender neutral term for ‘one who draws’.
“Draughtsman” is a gender-neutral word, like the words for engineer, designer, artist, or architect. The fact that the word contains the word “man” in it is an artefact of the way that languages evolved. The word “man” in the Germanic languages from which English grew referred to women and to men together.
Those who are concerned that the words “draughtsman” or “draftsman” refer only to males are going to struggle with the awkward workarounds that have consumed so many pages of Drawing Research.
You will find the etymological information from the Oxford English Dictionary below, together with the relevant definitions of the words “man” and “draughtsman.” As the OED notes, the word man has come to have gender-biased meanings during the 20th century. It is for this reason that discussions such as this evolve.
Yours,
Ken Friedman
Ken Friedman, Ph.D., D.Sc. (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Tongji University in Cooperation with Elsevier | URL: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/she-ji-the-journal-of-design-economics-and-innovation/
Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| Visiting Professor | Faculty of Engineering | Lund University ||| Email [log in to unmask] | Academia https://tongji.academia.edu/KenFriedman | D&I http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn
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Etymology from the OED:
Forms: 1. Singular. a. Old English manna, Old English monn, Old English monna... (Show More)
Frequency (in current use): Show frequency band information
Origin: A word inherited from Germanic.
Etymology: Cognate with Old Frisian man, mon, Middle Dutch man (plural manne, man; Dutch man (plural mannen, rarely mans)), Old Saxon man(plural man; Middle Low German man (plural man, manne, men, menne, mans, mannes, mennes, mannen, mennen, manner, menner), Low German Mann (plural Manns, Männer)), Old High German man (plural man; Middle High German man (plural man), German Mann (plural Männer)), Old Icelandic maðr (stem mann-, plural menn; Icelandic maður), Faroese maður, Norwegian mann (plural menn, (Nynorsk) menner), Swedish man(plural män), Danish mand (plural mænd), Gothic manna (genitive singular mans, plural mans, mannans); further etymology uncertain. The forms in the various Germanic languages belong to two different types of stem: one is a consonant-stem, giving Old English mann (genitive mannes, dative menn, plural menn, genitive manna, dative mannum; some of these Old English forms have been re-formed after the a-declension) and the other an n-stem, giving Old English manna, the only attested oblique form of which is mannan, found almost exclusively as accusative singular.
Old English menn(plural and dative singular) has the umlaut which regularly arose from an original -i in the nominative plural and dative singular of Germanic consonant-stem nouns.
In the Old English corpus as a whole the spelling with o appears to be somewhat under half as frequent as that with a . Many Northumbrian and Mercian texts normally have the o-spelling; it is common in early West Saxon texts, but the a -spelling heavily predominates in later texts. In Middle English, a spelling with o occurs mainly in texts from the west midland counties of England from Lancashire in the north to Gloucestershire in the south. J. Wright Eng. Dial. Gram. (1905) records /ɒ/ (or /ɔ/) as the vowel of this word in approximately the same area (with outliers to the north, east, and south). In sense 16 the regional forms min and mun , and mon outside the west midlands, appear to have developed under low stress.
The pre-Germanic etymology of the word is problematic. Formerly, the -nn- of the Germanic consonant stem was held to have developed from an earlier -nw- , directly reflected in Sanskrit manu man (see Manu n.). However it is possible that the n -stem is the earlier formation, and that the form with double -nn- represents a later generalization of the double -nn- which originally occurred in those parts of the paradigm where the n of the suffix, subject to zero-grade of ablaut, immediately followed the n of the base. The earlier form with the single n of the base followed by the vowel + n of the suffix may explain the Gothic variant mana- used in compounds (e.g. mana-maurþrja murderer). This word and Sanskrit manu have been together referred by some to the Indo-European base of mind n.1, on the basis that thought is a distinctive characteristic of human beings. A more recent theory suggests a derivation (with loss of an initial obstruent) from the Indo-European base of Lithuanian žmonės people and Old Prussian smunents man, which is a variant (with a different ablaut grade) of the Indo-European base of classical Latin homō man, Old English guma and its Germanic cognates (see gome n.1), and Old Lithuanian žmuo ; but these Indo-European words are usually referred to the Indo-European base of classical Latin humus (see humus n.) and ancient Greek χθών (see chthonic adj.) meaning ‘earth’.
In all the Germanic languages the word had the two senses ‘human being’ and ‘adult male human being’, though except in English it has been mainly replaced in the former sense by a derivative (German Mensch , Dutch mens , Swedish människa , Danish menneske person, human being: compare mannish n.). In Old English the words distinctive of sex were wer were n.1 and wīf wife n., wǣpmann wapman n. and wīfmann woman n.; both the masculine terms became obsolete by the end of the 13th cent., leaving English with no means of distinguishing the two major senses. The genderless uses of man to mean ‘human being’ or ‘person’ are now often objected to on the grounds that they depreciate women, and are frequently replaced by human , human being , or person .
There is a parallel between semantic developments in English represented by senses 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 and semantic developments in post-classical Latin homo and Old French hom(om , home , ome ). In classical Latin homō primarily meant ‘human being’ or ‘person’ (in contrast to vir ‘adult male human being’); it also had the sense ‘member of a military force, crew, or other body’, where the contextual reference was normally to a male. In post-classical Latin, homo developed the senses ‘adult male human being’, ‘armed retainer’, ‘servant, retainer’, and ‘vassal’ (8th cent. or before; all found in British sources by 12th cent.). The reflexes of classical Latin homō in the Romance languages have the dual senses ‘human being’ and ‘adult male human being’. Both senses are attested for Old French hom in the earliest sources (end of 10th cent.); the Old French word also has the senses ‘husband’ (11th cent.), ‘fighting man’ (12th cent.), and ‘vassal’ (12th cent.).
S. Afr. use in senses 8a, 16b, and 16c is after Afrikaans man. Sense 24 is probably after Anglo-Norman home man, chess piece (13th cent. or earlier; compare post-classical Latin homo (14th cent. in a British source), and see chessmen n., etymological note). Sense 25 perhaps first arose in the compound man-of-war (see man-of-war n. 2a). Sense 27 appears to be sparsely attested before the 19th cent.: some Middle English surnames (one of which is cited in Middle Eng. Dict.) possibly derived from toponyms incorporating man in this sense are given in G. Kristensson Stud. Middle Eng. Topogr. Terms (1970) 35. The earliest attestations of toponyms of this kind are of Knock Old Man (1588) and Seavy Man (1652) (both in Westmorland). Some scholars consider the man element in these names to reflect the Old British base of Welsh maen , Cornish men ‘stone’, later reinterpreted as English man : place names apparently containing this element are found in Cumberland, Westmorland, Cheshire, Lancashire, Dorset (attested in the Domesday Book), and Cornwall (attested in late Old English charters). Sense 28 originally referred to the side of a penny which had the king's head, the ‘woman’ being the side with the figure of Britannia.
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The applicable definition states:
I. A human being (irrespective of sex or age).
To this, the OED appends a note distinguishing a change that has come about in recent years: “Man was considered until the 20th cent. to include women by implication, though referring primarily to males. It is now frequently understood to exclude women, and is therefore avoided by many people. … In some of the quotations in this section, it is difficult or impossible to tell whether man is intended to mean ‘person’ or ‘male human being’.”
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The definition for the term “draughtsman” gives both senses of the word:
“1. One whose profession is to make drawings, plans, or sketches; a man employed or skilled in drawing or designing.
“2. One who draws up, or makes a draft of, a writing or document; one whose office it is to draw up legal or official documents. Now more usually draftsman.”
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