| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. |
A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996.
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5. Gender: Sexist Language and Assumptions
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| § 24. master |
| Like man, master is a word that has produced many familiar compounds and other usages in English. The compounds include masterpiece, mastermind, masterstroke, concertmaster, master bedroom, and master plan, to name a few. If you have an original document to copy, you may refer to it as the master, and if you have conquered a particularly difficult problem, you might say you have mastered it. However, also like man, for many people master has masculine associations because of its sense “a man who serves as the head of a household.” | 1 |
| Many senses of master, such as the noun sense “an expert” and the verb sense “to make oneself an expert at,” have long been considered gender-neutral and are in wide use. Some words, like masterpiece and master plan, have lost most, if not all, of their associations with maleness. They exist as distinct words, and people do not usually think of them as a combination of parts each containing a different meaning. Despite this, some people are offended by the use of master in any context—whether by itself or in compounds—because of its connotation of maleness and its associations with the institution of slavery. | 2 |
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| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. Copyright © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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