A usage question - do you consider the term "fellows" to be inherently gendered?

[dragonfrog@mastodon.sdf.org]

A usage question - do you consider the term "fellows" to be inherently gendered?

i.e. would you read the sentence "some fellows were playing volleyball at the park this morning" to imply men were playing, or people the speaker considers fellow citizens / fellow volleyball fans / etc.?

#language #gender

[ameliasbrain@mstdn.ca]

@dragonfrog It annoys me that "fellows" is gendered when it shouldn't be, but yes, it is very much a synonym for "guys" in my lexicon. Except that guys can be sometimes be derogatory/dismissive ("some guys"), while fellows & especially fellas (which I'd be more likely to say) is usually friendly.

But yeah, it is weird because "fellow" as an adjective is not gendered at all. So the noun should be neutral. But it got adopted into English at a time when the fellows (🤨) using it didn't consider women to be their fellow in social or professional pursuits, so...

And oops, now we've hit semantic satiation. fell-ow fe-llow f'low... ‍