HE-MAN

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Dr. Goodword
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HE-MAN

Postby Dr. Goodword » Tue Jun 05, 2007 11:42 pm

• he-man •

Pronunciation: hee-mæn • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun

Meaning: A manly, virile man, a strong man with well-developed muscles who avoids anything suggesting femininity (such as quiche)

Notes: Today's Good Word is odd in several ways. First, it is a compound noun containing a pronoun, something prohibited by English grammar. Only a few such words exist and they are rather peripheral: she-wolf and she-goat appear often enough though he-wolf and he-goat are rarely encountered. Moreover, there is no she-man or even she-woman (what would that be?) The plural is, as expected, he-men.

In Play: He-men are not guys; they are generally perceived to be tough and insensitive: "Jim Nasium was denied membership in the motorcycle gang because he wasn't enough of a he-man." Jim used a church key rather than his teeth to open his beer bottles; besides, he can read the labels! There are things we can do with this word, though: "Marilyn Baltimore wanted a moral rather than a physical he-man for a husband."

Word History: He is the descendant of the Old English word for "this". In Old English the third person pronouns were gender variants of the word for "this": he was "this (masculine)", hio, "this (feminine), hit, "this" (neuter). These forms evolved into today's he, she, and it. The original Proto-Indo-European root underlying he was ko-/ke- "this", which also went on to become Latin cis "this". With the suffix -eter it became kotoryi "which" in Russian and the cetera of et cetera "and the-rest" in Latin. Man turns up in several Indo-European languages, including German Mann and, with a suffix, Mensch "human", which English imported via Yiddish as mensch "decent person". In the Slavic languages it picked up a similar suffix but lost the N, becoming muzh "husband" and muzhik "peasant" in Russian.
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Postby scw1217 » Wed Jun 06, 2007 7:51 am

LOL @ "he-man" as word for the day. And WHAT is wrong with quiche, she asks?
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Postby Bailey » Wed Jun 06, 2007 10:00 am

I see no dichotomy between he-man and kind and sensitive.

mark he-big-guy Bailey

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gailr
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Re: HE-MAN

Postby gailr » Wed Jun 06, 2007 4:39 pm

Today's Good Word is odd in several ways. First, it is a compound noun containing a pronoun, something prohibited by English grammar. Only a few such words exist and they are rather peripheral: she-wolf and she-goat appear often enough though he-wolf and he-goat are rarely encountered. Moreover, there is no she-man or even she-woman (what would that be?) The plural is, as expected, he-men.
Don't forget the useful she-devil or the even more...peripheral...she-male.

A fine definition of he-man by Cleolinda (on the movie "300"):
We Spartans are hard, strong, strongly hard and hardily strong—the greatest warriors the world has ever known, with our fearsome manliness and our mansome fearliness. We throw babies off cliffs and beat our children with reeds until they learn not to cry, and then, when a boy is old enough to walk, we throw him out into the cold, to the frostbite and the wolves, and if he doesn’t come back, then TOO BAD. Spartans have no toes! SPARTANS NEED NO TOES! And then, once a boy has proven himself to be totally hardcore, he returns to us a man.

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Postby sluggo » Wed Jun 06, 2007 5:36 pm

Sheesh.
I thought this was pidgin English, along with she-wolf etc.

Quiche is a treat. Especially while lounging in front of the TV football game with a beer.
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