A2 - Wednesday ; April.23, 1982 -‘Nosth Shore News —.

English unmanned

FIRST OF ALL,

by Bob Hunter

I'd like to say congratulations

to Ms. Susan Lloyd, the new editor at Roget's

Thesaurus.

She’s the person who
made headlines around the
world by virtue of having
exorcised the Thesaurus of
some 20,000 sexist terms,
including the word
“mankind”.

Frankly, I’ve never really
been that fond of editors,
male or female. They cut
words, you know.

But in the case of Ms.
Lloyd, I have to give credit
where credit is due. Here is
an editor the likes of whom
we haven't seen since the
pages of George Orwell's
1984. Remember Newspeak?

Newspeak was the process
of altering language so that
people would be forced to
think only in terms that the
Party wanted them to think.
The theory was that if you

eliminated words like
‘rebellion’ from_ the
language, you could

eliminate it from the hearts
and minds of men... er,
persons.

There was, of course, a
slight assumption inherent in
all this. It was the assump-
tion of the right to muck with
people’s minds.

I know the word
“brainwash” 1s passe these

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days. And it would be going
too far to accuse Ms. Lloyd
of attempting to do anything
so intimate to our heads, but
let’s face it, she has pulled
off a coup d’etat of con-
siderable proportions.

I mean, altering the
Thesaurus! Good grief, isn't
there a law against that?

I stl remember the day I
bought my first Thesaurus,
and walked home, trem-
bling, to my typewriter, fully
aware that I had just added
to my arsenal of literary
equipment the equivalent of
an atomic bomb.

To this day. I still run a
msk of losing myself for
unknown penods of time by
reaching for the Thesaurus
in search of a perfect word
or phrase, only to bog down
in the process of choosing

from among the seemingly

limitless options.

I'm not sure if one is
supposed to admit actually
using a Thesaurus, but the
truth is it can save you a lot
of pacing around, pleading
with a hard-hearted Muse. A
friend of mine, a_ travel
writer, describes the process
of sitting down to confront a
blank page as “facing the

the land for the pubhce “The
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t

980 3313

white bull”.

On Thesaurus, stand with
me now!

You can imagine how
appalled I was to learn that
the Very Good Book was
being tortured into a new
shape on the Procrustean

bed of anti-sexist
revisionism.

Appalled? Gee, I'd better
watch that word, it's a

synonym -- at least in my old
Thesaurus -- for ‘“un-
manned”. Come to think of

it, I guess that’s what's
happening to the English
language.

Hey, I'm trying hard to
knock it. 'm a feminist. I'm

strictly personal —

in favor of total equality in
every respect, nght down to
the point of believing that if
there have to be armies, they
should include an equal
number of females.

I have to agree with the
idea of changing “mankind”
into “humankind”, but in my
heart, as a wordsmith, it
hurts to see a wonderful,
punchy word like mankind
vanish.

A Thesaurus, after all, is
supposed to be the opposite
of a dictionary. It's a book
you turn to when you have
your meaning in mind
already but don’t have the
word, whereas, with a
dictionary, you have the
word, but don't know what it
means.

If Ms. Lioyd has truly
eliminated the word
mankind, I trust she will
have eliminated the word
“womankind” as well, even
though, damn it, that leaves
us the poorer for having to
resort to a single word that
sounds like somekind of
androgynous fudge.

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Humankind. Yuk. What's
wrong with “humanity”
anyway? Why lessen the
options available to the poor
writer? Offer non-sexist
terminology, for sure, but
don't cut the language down
into less than what it was.

No more mankind, eh? I

think of John Donne:

“Any man’s’ death
diminishes me, because I am
involved in Mankinde; And
therefore never send to
know for whom the bell
tolls; It tofls for thee.”

Indeed, Mankind,

your
days are numbered.

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