Re: CHAT: Homo Sapiens (was: fiery spirits)

On Saturday, October 25, 2003, at 05:12  PM, Stone Gordonssen wrote:
>>> 'wæpnedman' or 'wífman'.  Meaning 'weaponed-man'
>>>
>>> I suggest that Males are referred to as Wepmen,
>>> and we adopt 'man' as the gender-neutral term.
>>
>> Cool. Wouldn't be a little easy to assimilate the
>> hell of it, though? -->
>>
>> wepman > webman > wemman > w@man
>>
>> Huzzah say the feminists! --> ;))))))
>
> "Real" feminists will object to the originating idea that only males
> are/were weaponed. :)
>
In Hebrew, an obsolete word for 'weapon' is |zayin|.  |Zayin| today is
the name of a letter.  It's also a slang word for 'penis'.  So in that
sense, I'd say |wepman| is perfectly correct and legitimate ;) .

Actually, because of the slang implications of the name of the letter,
Hebrew-speakers have been known to, when counting with letters (i.e.
Alef, Bet, Gimel, Dalet...), replace the Zayin with the word
|shevi`i(t)| 'seventh'.


-Stephen (Steg)
  "that's Mr. Hheshvan to you!"