I only have two dictionaries, but both have male and female as both adjectives and nouns. In what dictionary are you seeing them only as adjectives?
Even dictionary.com has “noun: a male person” and “noun: a female person”, which goes directly against both your grammar point and your livestock point.
Hopefully you’re just a linguistic prescriptivist with a preferred dictionary that doesn’t match mine. Edit: removed a rude remark
That said, as a descriptivist, I accept that those words (as nouns or otherwise) are changing to sometimes be derogatory, so I try not to use them to describe people, just to avoid my intentions being misunderstood.
Just a thoughtless prescriptivist, repeating what I’d understood from previous such discussions, without having done my own due diligence. 🤷 I stand corrected.
I only have two dictionaries, but both have male and female as both adjectives and nouns. In what dictionary are you seeing them only as adjectives?
Even dictionary.com has “noun: a male person” and “noun: a female person”, which goes directly against both your grammar point and your livestock point.
Hopefully you’re just a linguistic prescriptivist with a preferred dictionary that doesn’t match mine. Edit: removed a rude remark
That said, as a descriptivist, I accept that those words (as nouns or otherwise) are changing to sometimes be derogatory, so I try not to use them to describe people, just to avoid my intentions being misunderstood.
Just a thoughtless prescriptivist, repeating what I’d understood from previous such discussions, without having done my own due diligence. 🤷 I stand corrected.
Glad my suspicion was wrong, sorry for the rude comment!