Today is Ken's birthday (as well as William Shakespeare's), and I wrote him a message on Facebook. At first I used a word I don't use much ("he is my confidante") so fortunately I looked it up to be sure it meant what I thought it did. It did not! A confidante is a woman?
A lot of words from the French change their endings depending on gender - both nouns and adjectives. As well as confidant/confidante, beau/belle came up recently in another thread. Blond/blonde is also common, although I've noticed that, in some American writing at least, the distinction seems to be disappearing, with blond used for both sexes.
Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Interesting. I had no idea there were two ways of spelling it. You are right; when I look it up spelled that way, it says "one to whom secrets are entrusted."
Bruce Jenner announced he now considers himself a woman. Which made me wonder at what point in the process do you begin to use the feminine pronoun to describe yourself and what pronoun do you use when you are not quite either gender?
I have been thinking about this, and since we speak English and not French, it doesn't really make sense to me that there are two spellings for the word.
But if you are using a French word it makes sense to follow the French conventions. Some words, however, have been fully assimilated into English and use English spelling rules. The question is - how far has the process gone?
Usually, but not always, the masculine version of the word is the one adopted into English. In the case of confidant/confidante I don't think anyone would have raised an eyebrow if you were to refer a a female friend as a confidant, but to refer to Shu as a confidante would be odd. Similarly, any fair-headed person could be called blond, but a blonde would normally only refer to a woman or girl.
Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
According to the OED, blond is most common in the US, and blonde is most common in the UK. There are Middle English citations where it is spelled with e and refers to a man.
