Talk:blond

Usage

From the OED:

adjective

(also blond)(chiefly of hair)

1. fair or pale yellow

her long blonde hair

I had my hair dyed blonde.

1. having hair of a fair or pale yellow color

a tall blonde woman'

1. having fair hair and a light complexion ...

she was blonde and blue-eyed ...

And maybe someone forgot to tell M-W as well:

—spelled blond when used of a boy or man and often blonde when used of a girl or woman

She has blonde highlights in her hair.

M-W and OED (retrived 29 Nov 11) agree that "blonde" with an "e" can also be used as an adjective when describing females. And since M-W is a US based wordbook, it also highlights that blonde with an "e" is still in use in the US as well. --AnWulf ... Ferþu Hal! 04:23, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

RFC discussion: July 2011

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for cleanup (permalink).

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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blond

Needs a fact-based treatment of usage, including UK/US differences. [[blonde]] provides a good start. DCDuring TALK 11:17, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Other words varying by person's gender in English

In case anyone wants to copy (or templatize) the usage notes: other words that may vary by gender in English, due to copying from French, include naif/naive and exigeant/exigeante. Equinox ◑ 18:50, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Some readers will find even the adjective to be sexist when it modifies woman and not hair.

Some readers will find even the adjective to be sexist when it modifies woman and not hair. --Backinstadiums (talk) 17:59, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

You are quoting "Garner's Modern English Usage", apparently. Equinox ◑ 18:00, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

"Blond" as Official Spelling

Driver License indicates: "BLN - Blond or Strawberry" [1], which does not seem to admit of any 'Blonde' spelling? --Geographyinitiative (talk) 02:37, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Either spelling is acceptable. Choosing just one in a particular context does not mean the other is wrong. Equinox ◑ 08:09, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

@Equinox (I did not mean that either spelling was "wrong".) If you are interested, there is a sentence in the Usage notes section which currently reads: "However, some writers, especially in the United States, treat the spellings as interchangeable and use both gender-neutrally." I understand that Wiktionary can include material that is not sourced, and which is based soley on personal experience. But I personally do not know that the quoted statement is factually accurate, particuarly the part reading: "some writers, especially in the United States". Ever since 1776? Only since 1976? Who says? I found articles from The Times, BBC, DW, and France 24 using "blond" for women- see Citations:blond. Is the quoted statement true, false, scientific, rumor? What would George Washington and Thomas Jefferson's usage be? How can I confirm the usage pattern that the usage note is describing? People love to hate the USA, so I'm always on the alert when I see something that implies "Americans aren't smart enough to understand this, lulz". It took me ten minutes to find four major media outlets from outside the USA with this usage. My edit here: [2] partially reverses or changes material added with a lot of other stuff in 2012 here: [3] that came from something on the blonde page- see [4] that reads "Particularly in the US, blond has been used as a gender-neutral term since the 1970s." [5] [6] The wording that I changed to is more like the statement we see before -sche's 2012 edit on blond that read: "Not surprisingly, writers may use the spellings interchangeably." --Geographyinitiative (talk) 23:23, 18 April 2024 (UTC) (Modified)

Please check my work if you're interested, because I was just going off the fact that I had the four European media outlets using "blond woman" when I removed the comment concerning gender interchangability being a mostly American phenomenon. I know nothing about the insight concerning changes since the 1970s. Please revert me as needed. Thanks! --Geographyinitiative (talk) 20:29, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative: @-sche My own understanding is that "blond" is the generic term (adjective), and "blonde" is a noun we borrowed from French to describe light-haired women, similar to the borrowing of "brunette". I would accept "blonde hair" for a woman's hair (although transferring her gender to her hair is a bit dubious) but probably not for a man's hair. Just a native-speaker viewpoint. Another interesting Frenchy pair in English is naif-naive. You rarely see the first one. Equinox ◑ 01:31, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

I think this is correct. AFAICT some people make the distinction in all parts of speech: "her hair is blonde", "three women: two blondes and a brunette"; "his hair was blond", "three men: two blonds and a brunet". Other people don't make the distinction in any POS, and among those people, some treat blonde as the generic word (the same way brunette is the generic word and brunet is rare), others treat blond as the generic word (like connoisseur is the generic word and connoisseuse is rare). At ngrams, blonde and blond seem to be equally common, although blondes is several times more common than blonds. It would not surprise me if some people made the distinction but only for one POS and not the other, but I think the usage notes hit the key notes (some people make a distinction, others don't). - -sche (discuss) 07:14, 20 April 2024 (UTC)