Linguistic Oddity: Intermission

[I'm fascinated by language. I think I'm going to start interjecting the odd bit of wordplay in this blog; they'll all be labelled "language."]


Two words. Cognate equivalents. But they aren't even the same part of speech. What does that tell us about gender equality?

effeminate
emasculate

One's an adjective: effeminate is how something or someone *is*. No matter what you do---remove her ovaries and breasts, change her behavior to super-macho, you cannot "effeminate" a woman.

But the other is only a verb: see a rather butch female walking down the road, you don't say "Ooh, doesn't she strike you as a bit emasculate?"

Something to ponder.........