Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2018 January 24

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

January 24

Universidad EAFIT

Does "EAFIT" stand for anything, and if so, what? Nyttend backup (talk) 20:41, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

"The word EAFIT is a Spanish abbreviation for Escuela de Administracion y Finanzas e Instituto Tecnológico" (from an old version of our article). DuncanHill (talk) 20:51, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Ah, and now I see that in the first sentence of the Spanish Wikipedia article. I checked our article and their website, but completely forgot to check the es:wp article, and I'm surprised that such a thing would have been removed from our article here. Thank you. Nyttend backup (talk) 21:06, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Hm, it looks like it was removed from the infobox in this somewhat spammy edit. Nyttend backup (talk) 21:08, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Why are there no male coeds?

It may be a bit dated these days, but the term "coed" (sometimes "co-ed") was used in reference to educational institutions that had both male and female clientele. For an adjectival example, "I learnt about the birds and bees early because I went to a coed school".

But when applied as a noun to an individual, it only ever meant a girl. "Three coeds were walking down the hallway" meant three girls, not three boys or any boys at all. It was a girls-only term. Why would that be? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:47, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Because in the old days, universities tended to be men-only, except maybe for teachers' schools and expressly women-only schools. And it looks like Louisa May Alcott may share in the blame for this old-fashioned term "co-ed".[1] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:07, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

One simply cannot calculate the utter ruination wrought on Western civilization by LMA! μηδείς (talk) 07:07, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) It was a neologism that became vernacular. Standard rules don't apply for such evolutionary linguistics. —107.15.152.93 (talk) 21:11, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Note that the adjectival form isn't really dated. Consider this press release, May 2007, from when Randolph-Macon Women's College became Randolph College and started admitting men. Nyttend backup (talk) 21:12, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Bugs has it. When a group is historically composed of only one gender, it's the new gender that gets a marked term. In many cases, it seems mostly where the new term just adds the gender (e.g. "male nurse"), it has gradually been removed as people become more accepting of the role. In cases where a new word was coined ("co-ed", "actress") this seems less consistent. Sometimes the words survive, perhaps because they have more clearly defined connotations, perhaps because they're less clunky than adding "female..." to everything. Matt Deres (talk) 19:52, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Some good stuff here (not an RS itself, but links to sources). Matt Deres (talk) 19:57, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks to all for your enlightening answers. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:22, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Resolved