Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2015 July 3

= July 3 =

"Man up" not "gender neutral" - what is current best exact equivalent in English usage
Is there in current English usage a gender-neutral equivalent to "man up" (meaning "be brave or tough enough to deal with an unpleasant situation" or (MacMillan) "to start being brave and dealing with a difficult situation")? Do any of the major style guides say anything anent this? I wish to avoid affronting anyone, but could not find such after an assiduous search :(.  Collect (talk) 22:03, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
 * toughen up, pluck up, brave up? ---Sluzzelin talk  22:12, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
 * None of which remotely come near the idiomatic meaning as noted by Zimmer (and as the Guardian article notes) . And saying "Pluck Up!" might well arouse ire. Collect (talk) 22:21, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
 * More like to arouse ridicule. "Fight Fiercely, Harvard!" and all that sort of thing. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:17, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Be a mensch. Maybe it's half a century out of date, but who cares; its recipient might appreciatively recognize the reference to The Apartment, a wonderful film. Possibly ineffective in Britain, where people might mistake it for a reference to this person. -- Hoary (talk) 22:45, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Not at all equivalent. A mensch is, among other things, a particularly decent human being. "Man up" is a different stereotype; basically, "man up" means "grow some balls", and there really isn't a gender neutral way to express "act more like a stereotypical male". --jpgordon:==( o ) 22:56, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I guess there is overlap somewhere in the field of courage and doing the right thing without regard to personal consequences (WP has an article on moral courage which I found via de:Zivilcourage, an everyday-word in German). Regarding perfect synonymy, see also "Why do synonyms exist?", e.g.) ---Sluzzelin talk  23:05, 3 July 2015 (UTC)


 * What do you know? I always thought mensch referred to a man (and was not used for a woman) but apparently it has a complicated history in the German to English transfer.  Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:11, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I suggest "grow up". Cullen328  Let's discuss it  23:16, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
 * That's something children say to each other. Not the same thing. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 03:24, 5 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Not always children. InedibleHulk (talk) 00:40, 6 July 2015 (UTC)


 * The expression "take courage" is used in some translations of John 16:33.
 * —Wavelength (talk) 23:28, 3 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Last week the assistant chief of police in Detroit said "man up or woman up, whatever, and tell us what's going on" after a shooting. "Woman up" gets a lot of Google results. It's far removed from what "man up" is supposed to mean, but maybe that's a good thing. Adam Bishop (talk) 23:57, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

Not exactly gender neutral, but around here people say "time to put your big boy/girl pant(ie)s on" or "you better cowboy/cowgirl up!", using either "boy" or "girl" as appropriate.--William Thweatt TalkContribs 01:23, 4 July 2015 (UTC)


 * How about the oldy but goody, "gird up your loins" (since the type of loins aren't specified) ? StuRat (talk) 02:20, 4 July 2015 (UTC)


 * ''Pull yourself together catslash (talk) 21:01, 4 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Is "be brave" no good? InedibleHulk (talk) 22:42, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

May I suggest simply "grow up"? --174.88.133.209 (talk) 02:20, 5 July 2015 (UTC)
 * That's something children say to each other. Not the same thing. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:35, 5 July 2015 (UTC)
 * The Friendly Giant politely suggests looking up. Not way up, but seven steps. InedibleHulk (talk) 02:49, 5 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Perhaps "Satisfy your needs!" could work. I doubt it. InedibleHulk (talk) 02:54, 5 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Something like "step up" or "stand up" can work, but the question would be whether women say "man up" to each other. If they do, then it's already de facto gender neutral. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 03:24, 5 July 2015 (UTC)


 * I was just today thinking of the popular phrase in the American military, suck it up. Basically used for "you're in a difficult situation, so don't complain, just deal with it". Variants of the phrase include "get a straw and suck it up" and "suck it up, buttercup". MatthewVanitas (talk) 17:17, 5 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Those aren't exactly best for a little girl afraid of the dentist (or something). Probably just scare her more. Nothing patronizing or rude about "be brave". InedibleHulk (talk) 00:36, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

She's an alumni
Here and here, a woman is described as "an SJSU alumni". ALUMN* isn't really in my own idiolect (I'd say she was a graduate): however inflected, it strikes me as a somewhat quaint Americanism. And I know that as foreign words are anglicized, strange things happen to them (opera is rarely a plural). So I'm not shocked, but I am mildly intrigued: In current Californian English, is "alumni" commonplace in feminine singular contexts? -- Hoary (talk) 22:53, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
 * "Alumni" is plural. The singular would be "alumnus" (male) or "alumna" (female). A term often used is simply "alum". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:06, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I am commenting as a native speaker of American English, resident in California for 43 years. Although I understand that, technically, the word is plural, common 21st century usage here treats it as singular, and it is applied to both men and women without distinction. It would be unusual to hear "alumnus" in casual speech and I do not believe that I have ever heard anyone utter the word "alumna". Cullen328  Let's discuss it  23:31, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I see - like the way "media" and "criteria" are treated as singulars. Ugh. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 03:26, 4 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Or "phenomena", or "vertebrae", more ugh. "Alumna" appears very many times on Wikipedia. --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  03:43, 4 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I am not approving but simply reporting what I hear in spoken usage. That being said, I hear "phenomenon" and "vertebra" frequently. Entirely coincidentally, my brother was in a car crash yesterday, and fractured three neck vertebrae. No paralysis, fortunately. Cullen328  Let's discuss it  04:08, 4 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Hearing "phenomenon" is fine. Just don't try watching it. Maybe Phenomena would be better? Matt Deres (talk) 13:07, 4 July 2015 (UTC)


 * I bet that the word "alumna" is known in some traditional women's colleges which remain single-sex... AnonMoos (talk) 23:44, 4 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, it is. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 08:00, 5 July 2015 (UTC)


 * I know very little about Cambridge, having visited the place only a handful of times.  Are those places linked to part of the University?   I thought all Oxford and Cambridge women's colleges had become co - educational, the last being St Hilda's a few years ago.   St Benet's Hall, run by monks, was the last to admit women when they provided a special annexe for them recently.   My mother, who never set foot in Cambridge, studied at Somerville at the same time as Margaret Roberts.   When the family was living at Oxford my sister would often speak of female undergraduates as undergraduettes, emphasising the last syllable.   Is this a commonplace terminology? 87.81.147.76 (talk) 11:32, 5 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Betjeman uses the term in An Oxford University Chest (1938), so it's unsurprising to find it still in use in the early 1950's; it had died out by the late 70's (when some cats may or may not have attended that institution) . According to Google, it wasn't unique to Oxford - there was a magazine called "The Cambridge Gownsman and Undergraduette", published in the 1930's, but the term doesn't seem (fortunately) to have become generally popular.  Tevildo (talk) 14:24, 5 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Newnham and Murray Edwards (formerly New Hall) are both still single-sex (and both are full constitutent colleges of the University). The other main (and first) women's college was Girton, which started admitting male undergraduates in 1979. There's also Lucy Cavendish, which is women-only, but admits only graduate students and "mature" (over-21) undergraduates. As you say, the last women-only college at Oxford, St Hilda's, went co-ed in 2008. I've rarely heard anyone refer to "undergraduettes", and then only facetiously. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 14:53, 5 July 2015 (UTC)


 * I attended an Ivy League college in the 1980s, and at least in my day, there was a tendency to decline alumn- correctly in the nominative. Not everyone succeeded, but probably most did.  I can imagine that correct usage has declined even in the Ivy League and probably correlates to exposure to Latin, which has been declining everywhere.  Marco polo (talk) 14:26, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
 * From the OED, it seems that alumnus more or less died out in the UK in the 19th century, but was carried on (or taken up) in the US at about the same time. There is a similar story for alumna. I guess the words are back with the UK now. However, the plural of alumnus is alumni, while the plural of alumna is alumnae. There is a quote 1882 "The Alumnæ and Alumni of Oberlin". So "She is an alumni" is odd on several levels. Myrvin (talk) 14:58, 7 July 2015 (UTC)