Pretty sure he means in terms of the rank "Master Aircrew", ie being a master of being a loady.

He was probably a bit worried about what they'd do with the mortars....

I think the broader point was that no one in PJHQ factored the RAF Regiment into the plan; a plan which was seen by plenty in the RAF.

the Regiment was just overlooked, in a scenario that should’ve been their reason d’etre.

which was compounded how they, and a lot of non-flying personnel from the RAF, we’re treated when they returned from the Op. definitely “one rule for the winged master race, one rule for the blunties “….

That would be the NOUN ‘master’ and not the ADJECTIVE ‘master’ in the case of Master Aircrew. There are actually 3 different definitions of master.

NOUN - as in “Master of the household”. That is a male derivative.

VERB - as in “to master something, which means to overcome it”. It is gender neutral.

ADJECTIVE - as in a modifying word for a NOUN that means “being skilled or highly proficient”. It can also be used used as a modifying word for a NOUN of “something from which duplicates are made”. It is gender neutral in both cases. This is where it is used for Master Aircrew - where “Aircrew” is the NOUN and “Master” is the gender neutral ADJECTIVE to modify the Aircrew NOUN to indicate the highest level of proficiency.

Even though our senior leaders are post-graduate educated, they seem to have failed to get a grasp of the English language as they have insisted on misusing the noun “Aviator” both in context and also the fact that it is the male derivative of what Aviatrix is for females. Secondly, which is odd and ironic, they are all “Master of Arts” from the Staff College but obviously don’t understand that it is gender neutral too, as it using the verb “to master” rather than the noun that they seem to get their pants in a twist about. Maybe it is Swindon Polytechnic after all?? :E

Sir, you had it right in post #113 but you fall back into old errors. Aviatrix would only be correct if aviator had a Greek root. However, it doesn’t, it is from the French and aviatrice has etymological precedence by some years.

I noticed on the News last night that the BBC were interviewing a chap working in the NHS who they captioned as a "Ward Sister". I wonder when this will be changed?

I'm with N1 on this. My last tour of duty was as an exchange officer working in the French Ministry of Defence. One of the office staff was French Air Force Aviateur 1ere Classe and the one star always referred to her (3rd person) as ' l'aviatrice '. She had no problem presenting herself as 'Aviateur 1ere Classe'.

I’m not so sure it’s as crystal clear as you state…

Now the avia comes from avian/avis which is Latin for bird which derives from aetós in Greek. Now seeing aviation is a fairly modern phenomena then the etymology of someone who flies is likely to be pretty modern - so the etymology for "aircraft pilot," 1887, from French aviateur, from Latin avis "bird" + -ateur (the common French suffix for someone who does something - like dominateur where the feminine is dominatrice or more commonly in English dominator and dominatrix). The English feminine form of aviatrix is from 1927; the earlier French aviatrice is from 1910, and an earlier English aviatress was first used in 1911.

Now those terms would have been very fresh as Raymonde de Laroche was the first woman to fly a powered aircraft as a Pilot with a licence on 8th March 1910. So really the etymology and its usage starts around that time, where aviatrice, aviatress and aviatrix are effectively correct in their own respective rights.

Another reference here on the more modern use of -trix is here: https://www.affixes.org/alpha/t/-trix.html

I was basing my argument on the fact that there are equally good etymological arguments for aviatrix, aviatrice and even aviatress. However, when I did some digging the first reference to la lady pilot being described as an aviatrice dated back to 1911 whereas the term aviatrix appeared to come into use post WW1 when lady pilots appeared in the news. This would have given aviatrice etymological precedence by some years, hence the last sentence in my post. However, I have just done a bit more digging and have just found the term aviatrix was also used in 1907 so that would give aviatrix precedence after all.

So.... do we still address officers as Sir and Ma'am, accordingly?

FB:confused:

Where I work we have been told to just start emails with "Good afternoon" or "Colleagues", and similar in briefings, to make everyone equal in every respect. This is removing the military distinctives from what is principally a Civil Service and industry driven workforce.

In order to satisfy the above it is better to add another addressee, even if they don't need to know, and needlessly fill their Inbox otherwise one has to be more specific in appropriately addressing the military superior using the 'S' or 'M' word which could be offensive if one has not been privileged to see their choice of pronouns in their signature block! :ugh:

Either way Bword and ninthace regardless of the origin or precedence, a feminine version exists which rather defeats the purpose of the change.

The man wrote LADY!

I am told by them as knows that women prefer to be women [unless they want to be one of 57 other varieties] and not have doors opened and seats given up.

Still, old dog, new tricks ........

{Anyway one of our bell ringers is Lady X, married to Sir X]

signed
Dinosaur of Lincolnshire.