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Subject:Re: Re[2]: Killer From:"Wayne J. Douglass" <wayned -at- VERITY -dot- COM> Date:Thu, 14 Nov 1996 15:26:55 -0800
At 04:47 PM 11/14/96 -0800, Naomi Kritzer wrote:
>Steve Evanina said that he received the following info from a connector
>manufacturer and it sounds like a good choice to use instead of the
>male/female descriptors.
> "Identification of the sex of a connector can vary. The side with
> the pins is male and the side with socket contacts would be female.
> Using "male" and "female" is sometimes considered "politically
> incorrect." In most cases we say either plug and receptacle housing
> or plug and jack. Something like that can keep you from offending
> anyone."
Alas, the connector manufacturer only confuses the issue by referring to the
"sex" of the connector. A connector can be said to have a "sex" only by
analogy. And in English, connector, plug, or socket do not have gender
either, from a linguistic point of view.
To further muddy the waters, consider that the French terms for plug and
socket have the opposite gender that one would expect:
PLUG: prise (f) de courant
SOCKET: douille (m)
--Wayne Douglass
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Verity, Inc. Email: wayned -at- verity -dot- com
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