Governor = a person elected to the highest executive office in a state in the United States
Governess = a woman in charge of teaching children how to read, write, and do arithmetic
Although the two terms look similar, why is that “governor” means a person elected to the highest executive office and is gender-neutral, whereas a “governess” is someone (typically female) who instructs children? The former is political, whereas the latter is a domestic servant. WTF? If a man instructs children, then he would be called a “tutor” and not “governor”? If a woman is incumbent of the governor’s office, then she would be called a “governor” and not “governess” or “governoress”? :dubious:
The question is the first sentence with a question mark.
**Although the two terms look similar, why is that “governor” means a person elected to the highest executive office and is gender-neutral, whereas a “governess” is someone (typically female) who instructs children? **
I didn’t really want a definition of governess. :rolleyes:
It’s just part of the way languages work. The definition of any given word is nothing more than a convention, and the means by which definitions are “assigned” has more to do with convenience than logic.
To give an example akin to your own, the English word anthropology is a fairly direct translation of the Greek for “the science or study of man.” So if we use the same construction to coin a word for “the science or study of woman,” we get gynecology. Sorry, but that word’s already taken.
Our modern languages evolved over thousands of years and bear a lot of cultural baggage, including plenty of sexism.
Merriam-Webster says “a woman who governs”. I find it strange though, that even though “governess” means a “female governor” in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, female governors will just be known as “governors” rather than “governesses”. I suppose it’s too differentiate from the connotation of being a caretaker of children from an incumbent in political office.
Well, “anthropos” means “man” in the sense of the gender-neutral term or species of man. There were archaic terms defining the male “man” and the female “man”.
Another example would be calling a “pharmacist” an “apothecary” or vice versa. Back in the olden days, the apothecary was probably lower in rank than a physician. Nowadays, a pharmacist and a physician are probably middle-class equals.
This is just the way gendered languages work sometimes.
In Russian there is no way to say Secretary, as in Secretary of State, without it being masculine. The feminine equivalent means secretary as in “some one who does typing and brings you coffee.” A female secretary of state causes them some problem, because unlike in English, you cannot use the masculine form to apply to anyone.
English is actually considerably less gendered that some languages. If you say “woman Governor” it doesn’t sound like nonsense, whereas in some languages it does.
There’s no reason for it except the general explanation that language is one way culture is encoded and transmitted. This is why the study of linguistics is considered one wing of the study of human culture (anthropology).
You’re thinking about the process wrong. Look at this definition:
The word started small. Any man who was in charge of any group was a governor. A female was a governess. That usage still exists in the term “guv’nor,” applied to any person of status.
Over time the word grew as societies grew, to include the head of larger and larger groups. Women were almost never placed in charge of large or important groups, so the term governess retained its original meaning. Because it still has that original meaning, people find it strange to suddenly start using it for women who have achieved equality of power in the modern world, and besides, those woman don’t like gender-based terms of power. So a female governor is today a governor, not a governess.
The terms look similar because they once were gender variations of the exact same usage. It’s just that they diverged with time, in an standard process. There’s no WTF? about it.
A similar thing happened with ducere, “to lead”. Anybody that duced around all day would be a ductus. If something needed leading, he’d duce the shit out of it. Then someone started calling society’s bosses “Duke”. Today, you wouldn’t call your boss or quarterback a Duke, now would you?
The divergence in meaning between master and mistress provides another example of this. The two terms originated as male and female equivalents but drifted apart in meaning due to their real world usage.
You can also see it in the use of the word “governor” in mechanics for items that regulate something or other in a complex set of machinery.
English has the default (generally, not in every case, etc.) for the masculine version of a word to be the “base” word, and then if necessary, have a feminine version offshoot from that. For something like governor/governess, there WAS a female position that was common enough to need a specific term - therefore geverness got created and used regularly for that.
In contrast, for some things, we just never had a feminine offshoot come into popular usage - think of President for example, or Officer. Both of those, I’m fairly certain, are because there was a long period of time where a woman wouldn’t BE either of those terms, and then the period of social shift which changed that situation was so quick (in linguistic terms) that a female offshoot never really had a chance to get off the ground. So we linguistically jumped straight from:
President = assume male
to
President = assume gender-neutral.
The reverse can be seen happening with the word Nurse - it’s gone from:
Nurse = female
to
Nurse = neutral.
Male nurses (instead of doctors) are a new and strange societal shift - language didn’t have any way of knowing that droves of menfolk were going to purposefully decide to choose a profession that was considered a much lesser valued option instead of being doctors like they should have. (The view is still shifting - there was a study using the conundrum “Doctor is operating on son, but Doctor isn’t the Father, who is the Doctor?” and noting that younger people are stumped far less often than their elders…) but the point remains - language isn’t predictive, so all we can do is make use of what makes most sense at the time, and is still available to use.
I think your problem is that you’re expecting language to be always logical and consistent. As a continually evolving construct, it really can’t be expected to be either. In fact, with English being the bastard hybrid that it is, I’m often surprised that it is as logical and systemic as it actually is!
In Spanish el policía is “the policeman”; la policía means “the police”, not “the policewoman” (that’s la mujer policía). It get’s worse. El hombre public means “public man” (ie a politician); la mujer publica means “public woman” (ie a whore).
While the first was true a few decades back, nowadays la policía means both the police and the policewoman, at least in countries where the sight of policewomen has become common (in writing they’re differentiated by capitalization).
And picking a few more nits, it’s el hombre público (you were missing the -o) and la mujer pública.
That’s your basis misconception. At the time when women who oversaw the education of children in a private household began to be called a ‘governess’, the men who did likewise were just as likely to be called a ‘governor’ as a ‘tutor’.
My strong suspicion would be that this use of ‘governor’ then falls out of fashion mainly because the men performing that role were keen to emphasise that they provided more advanced teaching and that they were thus not the mere male counterparts of a ‘governess’. Even when the two roles were actually much the same.
The former is political, whereas the latter is a domestic servant. WTF? If a man instructs children, then he would be called a “tutor” and not “governor”? If a woman is incumbent of the governor’s office, then she would be called a “governor” and not “governess” or “governoress”? :dubious:
(boss: Duke of Norfolk)