London - Fewer men are using sexist language to describe women, according to a study of conversational habits.
The analysis of 2.5 million spoken or written words found that terms like sexy and blonde have all but vanished from our vocabulary when women are referred to.
Other demeaning terms such as daft and stupid have also seen a sharp decline over the past 20 years, as has the association between females and the word naked.
Words that describe feminine qualities have risen in popularity.
Tony McEnery, joint head of the Spoken British National Corpus 2014 study, said: “Women are being described more in their own right and less in terms of their appearance. Now we only rarely hear a woman being described in terms of her hair – blonde, brunette, redhead and so on.”
The study also showed that men are now more commonly referred to in relation to their jobs, with an increase in the three terms working, rich and business. - Daily Mail