• Cethin
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    9 months ago

    I don’t know if you’re implying that those haven’t been used interchangeably for a very long time or not. Regardless, I’ll say it’s super old. Man refers to any human. Mankind is humanity. We also say man and woman for gender, which is also super old.

    • Ultraviolet@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      9 months ago

      Modern English is everything from the late 17th century Great Vowel Shift onward. Blame linguists.

      • Cethin
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        9 months ago

        Yeah, I hate the word “modern”. It’s about a 50/50 that it’s being used to say “now” or being used in a technical sense, which is referring to something that really isn’t modern anymore. I hope everyone has learned their lesson that time moves on past them and not to use “modern” as part of a name for anything. The fact that “post-modern” is often used to describe things that aren’t even new anymore makes it even worse.