The Verbalist a Manual Devoted to Brief Discussions of the Right and the Wrong Use of Words and to Some Other Matters of Interest to Those Who

Excerpt: ...use, and then it would be very improper to use any other; but it is very certain that the terms lady and gentleman are least used by those persons who are most worthy of being designated by them. With a nice discrimination worthy of special notice, one of our daily papers recently said: Miss Jennie Halstead, daughter of the proprietor of the 'Cincinnati Commercial, ' is one of the most brilliant young women in Ohio. In a late number of the London Queen was the following: The terms ladies and gentlemen become in themselves vulgarisms when misapplied, and the improper application of the wrong term at the wrong time makes all the difference in the world to ears polite. Thus, calling a man a gentleman when he should be called a man, or speaking of a man as a man when he should be spoken of as a gentleman; or alluding to a lady as a woman when she should be alluded to as a lady, or speaking of a woman as a lady when she should properly be termed a woman. Tact and a sense of the fitness of things decide these points, there being no fixed rule to go upon to determine when a man is a man or when he is a gentleman; and, although he Pg 112 is far oftener termed the one than the other, he does not thereby lose his attributes of a gentleman. In common parlance, a man is always a man to a man, and never a gentleman; to a woman, he is occasionally a man and occasionally a gentleman; but a man would far oftener term a woman a woman than he would term her a lady. When a man makes use of an adjective in speaking of a lady, he almost invariably calls her a woman. Thus, he would say, 'I met a rather agreeable woman at dinner last night'; but he would not say, 'I met an agreeable lady'; but he might say, 'A lady, a friend of mine, told me, ' etc., when he would not say, 'A woman, a friend of mine, told me, ' etc. Again, a man would say, 'Which of the ladies did you take in to dinner?' He would certainly not say, 'Which of the women, ' etc. Speaking of people en...