adorable

Hello,

One of my dictionaries states that the word adorable is mainly used by women. Is this true? Is it strange if a man says, "your daughters are very adorable"?

Thank you.

That's a subjective statement in the dictionary. Men may reserve this word for a single woman who is very special, but use it frequently to describe children.

The word is sufficiently strong that it is not generally modified by "very".

sus4 said:

One of my dictionaries states that the word adorable is mainly used by women. Is this true? Is it strange if a man says, "your daughters are very adorable"?

If your daughters are two-years-old, a man might say they're adorable. If a man says that about your teenage daughters, there's trouble.

All in all though I would say "mainly used by women" is true enough.

mgarizona said:

If your daughters are two-years-old, a man might say they're adorable. If a man says that about your teenage daughters, there's trouble.

All in all though I would say "mainly used by women" is true enough.

I utterly disagree and consider that comment to be approaching a very shallow joke at best.

I and any person I know may use that word about anything they like and I will not put a negative connotation to it but perhaps this is to do with a lack of intent on my part to do other than to use a perfectly acceptable word in a perfectly acceptable situation.

The English Language is remarkably flexible and the words we choose to use reveal as much about us as those that we choose to not use.

Gay is a marvelous word that is not used any more and there are so many other words that are limited in use by concepts that are beyond my comprehension.

This place reveals so much.

.,,
Loving words and loving people but in different ways as I adore things in different manners.

Hi Sus4,

Of course, anyone can use any word. But I think it's true that in the U.S., just as a matter of many years of paying close attention to language, in my experience, women do use the word more than men.

For example, the tiny "Smart Car" is just reaching the U.S., after having been available in Europe. If a man and woman both see it, they might say something like this:

She: It's simply adorable.
He: It's a cute looking little car.

Neither of these ways of saying it is any better, or worse, than the other. And both those phrases are used by men and women every day. I'm a firm supporter of women's rights (my mother went back to college at age 46 to get her degree and won a statewide award as a fighter for women's rights, neither of which was easy to do in the late 1960s and early 1970s). But there's no denying that there are certain phrases that women tend to say more than men do, and others that men tend to say more than women do.

I hope this is helpful, and that I haven't been standing on a soapbox too much. 👁 Eek! :o


Regards,
Ed

Thank you all for your help.

cuchuflete,
Thank you for telling me that "very" was redundant. That I didn't know.


mgarizona,
Your example is exactly what I wanted to know. I appreciate it.


Hi, .,,
Thank you for your comment. It seems like there's a differece in the perception of the word "adorable" among countries.


Hi, Ed the Editor,
Your explanation is very helpful. In Japan, men and women speak differently, so I'm especially sensitive to this sort of matter. I lived in the U.S. for several years, but when it comes to learning nuances of words, it's still hard.


-sus4

mgarizona said:

If your daughters are two-years-old, a man might say they're adorable. If a man says that about your teenage daughters, there's trouble.

That might possibly hold true if the man is overly leering when he says it, but otherwise I think it quite an acceptable comment for someone to make to a parent about their children.