{"id":16340,"date":"2006-02-21T08:18:26","date_gmt":"2006-02-21T16:18:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/neology\/2006\/02\/21\/distaff.html"},"modified":"2006-02-21T08:18:26","modified_gmt":"2006-02-21T16:18:26","slug":"distaff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/2006\/02\/21\/distaff\/","title":{"rendered":"distaff"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I always had a vague idea that \"distaff\" referred to a woman specifically in the role of wife. Turns out it just means female more generally, or specifically maternal.  MW11 gives the example phrase \"distaff executives\"; okay, if it just means \"female\" then that makes sense, but it sounds somehow condescending to me.<\/p>\n<p>As does the usage that made me go look the word up in the first place:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>A distaff trio sued Scott's firm in a Bay State court[....]<\/p>\n<p>--\"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/2006\/02\/15\/wmt-contraception-massachusetts-cx_gl_0215autofacescan05.html\">Scott's Wal-Mart Told To Stock Morning-After Pill<\/a>,\" article in <cite>Forbes<\/cite>, 15 February 2006<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>A WisCon panel description recently included the phrase \"The antidistaff companions and compatriots of the Lady Poetesses[....]\" From context it was clear that \"antidistaff\" meant \"male\" rather than \"anti-female.\"<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I always had a vague idea that &#8220;distaff&#8221; referred to a woman specifically in the role of wife. Turns out it just means female more generally, or specifically maternal. MW11&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-usage"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16340\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}