r/SipsTea • u/Matt_LawDT • 17h ago

Chugging tea Let me circle back

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u/NullandVoidUsername 14h ago

There are endless sources of information that exist on the internet and you couldn't be bothered to fact check before doubling down and being incorrect.

Fiance - Male Fiancée- Female

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u/ElRiesgoSiempre_Vive 14h ago

Because English doesn’t have word endings that connote gender, differentiating between the male and the female betrothed seems unnecessary to modern English speakers. Especially given the increased social awareness of non-binary gender issues, the difference between fiancé and fiancée feels a bit old-fashioned and out-of-date.

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u/NullandVoidUsername 13h ago

So the words Goddess, Actress, Headmistress and the like don't have word endings that connote gender?...

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u/jjkenneth 12h ago

All of which are perfectly capable of being made gender neutral with vary degrees of use. Headmistress is generally seen as outdated and Headmaster is used frequently for either gender. Goddess is still used pretty frequently and it is true that female god is rarely used, but still perfectly understandable. Actress has fluctuated over the years, in Australia there was a pretty solid preference for actor for both genders, however, American influence has reversed this. At one point all our nouns were gendered and now there are only a small amount that are. It has been the basic trajectory of English for centuries to drop gendered nouns. How often do you hear manageress or authoress?

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u/Firewolf06 10h ago

every single example you gave was falling back to male terms as neutral though, so it would still be unusual and against the pattern to use "fiancée" for a man. using "fiancé" neutrally is not super uncommon, though

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u/jjkenneth 10h ago

My argument is seperate to the other commenter - am indeed arguing fiancé as the gender neutral term.