2026, Gatherings, Uncategorized, Words

Ladies And Germs

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I posted last week about some annoying words carved into rocks by our water feature (Live and Life). Well, I ran into another annoying, albeit amusing, word at church Sunday.

Husband was the worship assistant Sunday and his job was to read the lessons and the announcements for the week. The announcements are written by the church secretary, who is a woman. Husband did a lovely job, but one word in the announcements set my teeth on edge.

Our pastor is divorced and is getting remarried sometime this summer to a Methodist minister from Sioux Falls. The congregation is quite happy for her. Husband had to announce that all the “Ladies” were invited to a shower for the pastor next week in the fellowship hall in the basement. Isn’t that nice?

Ladies? Ladies? Why not congregation women? Give me a break. Does that mean that church “gentleman ” can’t attend? What constitutes a “lady” these days? What if you are not feeling particularly ladylike? Does that mean you can’t go to the shower? I asked a friend from my Dorcas circle, and she laughed and said I could attend the shower no matter how unladylike I felt.

Ever seen a production of Church Basement Ladies? What words are annoying you these days?

45 thoughts on “Ladies And Germs”

  1. what is the congregations view on trans folk? is the pastors secratary less worldly than some? does she do this kind of thing often. chirch basement ladies never called out to me. i think i remember it being performed in the radison hotel in plymouth and being less than drawn in.
    so will the pastors locate in one town or the other? are you methodist too? i got the impression all the protestant variations think their brand is the right one. how will the interdenomiational discussions be resolved? by another religions proclaimation? this congregation is doomed
    tim

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    2. 1. The congregation is not doomed, but the pastor and secretary each need lessons in terminology.
      2. Clergy don’t need to reside in congregationally provided housing next door to the church any more. They may reside where they wish, and commute in.
      3. Your impression of Protestants anathametizing each other for belonging to the wrong brand is generally out of date. That doesn’t stop Protestants (or Roman Catholics, or anybody involved with a religious organization) from believing or saying, “my church is better than yours,” but the reason for “better” is usually located in the comfort of the pews, the quality of the music, or the supposed correctness of positions taken on cultural, social or political issues.

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  2. Well, first and foremost, there’s the “t” word. (It’s a good thing I didn’t take up bridge when my dad and grandma were urging me as a teenager.)

    The usage that’s bothering me right now is the word “girls” when applied to grown women. I watch a lot of Banana Ball snippets on Facebook and it’s very irritating to me that there are six women playing in that league and every single time they are referenced, they are referred to as girls. I’ve never heard the men referred to as anything having to do with their gender. Bugs me.

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  3. My father-in-law, who would have turned 100 this year, but didn’t make it, always used “Ladies”. I think “Women” was too charged with sex and power for him. That said, I never knew him to speak less of anyone, be it because of a difference in age, race, sex or political opinion. Now, he may have thought of others as somehow “inferior” for some condition, but he was too much of a gentleman, and too good a Christian (the RIGHT kind) to voice those opinions aloud.

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    1. It was recently pointed out to me that the right kind of Christians ( meaning in my world, progressive, not MAGA, not Evangelical) now call themselves “Christ Followers” to separate themselves from Evangelicals. I gotta say, the word Christian now gives me the word willies.

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      1. Fair enough. The meanings of words are almost always in flux. If one quotes a particular dictionary in support of one’s expressed opinion, one should add the year of the dictionary in question: As in “Merriam and Webster, 1957, defines it as follows:…”

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  4. This is a time of serious transition for our society. Part of it hanging on to the old ways for dear life (and willing to fight anyone who says different), part moving militantly forward (and equally prepared to fight and punish) and then there are those who just want people to accept each other and get along.

    It very tiresome and the amount of resources we waste on “do it MY way or else!!!” is worrying.

    That said, I can’t imagine a bridal shower for a divorced pastor just for “the ladies” at my church.

    We have all sorts of small groups, but I don’t know of any that are gender segregated by official designation (probably some that are that way defacto).

    I’m going to be pondering this in today’s heat.

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  5. I understand your irritation at the use of the term “ladies” as opposed to “women” or to no specification of gender at all. It’s anachronistic language but in a church setting not surprising.
    The word that stands out to me in the post is “lessons”. Of course I have no idea what constitutes a “lesson” in this context but lesson to me suggests knowledge and authority, empirical fact and correctness, which a church or a denomination may claim but does not actually possess.

    Religion is a belief or package of beliefs that obtain in the absence of actual evidence. As such, correctness or incorrectness do not apply. Therefore to couch a thought as a “lesson” is presumptuous. Better to term it a meditation or a reflection or an introspection. That at least admits to subjectivity.

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        4. It’s probably an artifact from a time when the church wielded arbitrary and unearned authority.

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    3. the word “lesson” in this context just means “the chunk of scripture that is being read”. So, the gospel lesson might be a bit of Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. The “first lesson” is from the Old Testament, and the “Second lesson” is from the New Testament, but NOT Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. The Psalm is just that, the Psalm. Sometimes it is sung, rather than read.

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  6. Thanks for the giggle, Renee. This trips my triggers too.

    I’ve never seen Church Basement Ladies. I’ve seen church basements though – and the “ladies” and the men and children that attend church basement gatherings. Nothing against all that, but it’s not for me.

    Yes, the words “ladies” and “girls” are annoying. The recent implication that we will be required to return to mid-century submissiveness is infuriating. Lies annoy me too. We hear them daily now. It’s intolerable.

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  7. I looked up the etymology of lady and woman this morning. I would have guessed that maybe lady came from the French and was a Norman inclusion but I was wrong. Both lady and woman have middle and old English origins, but lady was specifically the woman who was married to the Lord, the lady of the castle, etc. Beginning in the 1800s, lady started to refer to any woman who was considered to have higher status or higher sensibilities/manners, as it were. “Woman” actually derived from “wife of a man”. Kind of funny. Bill and Clyde… this was a quick shallow search so if you know more, let us know.

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        1. Again, that’s fair, but to what year is that definition connected. The entire “woman is derived from wife of a man, so therefore, you must be a wife to be a woman” thing is archaic. Similarly, a “spinster” must be someone who spins wool or flax into thread. If one does not do that, and she is not married, either, she must not exist at all!

          No. this cannot stand. Let words evolve, and flush what no longer applies.

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        2. In my world of 1950-1960s Midwest, no one was spinning anything, and unmarried women were pejoratively called spinsters with truckloads of judgments attached.

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      2. Originally “wif” didn’t indicate marital status it just meant an adult female. Later it could indicate their profession, as in fishwife. Midwife is an example of a holdover of that usage.

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  8. Rise and Get the Word Willies, Baboons,

    Anything that comes out of the felon’s mouth is irritating to me, B-I-G-L-Y. That guy ruins everything. Some news organizations have stopped running clips of him speaking because they discovered people were turning off the news when they heard his voice. I am right there!

    Other word irritants:

    Orientate. As is I will orientate you to this new procedure. It.Is.Orient.

    Normalcy. This was supposed to be Calvin Coolidge’s mistake but it has gone mainstream and it really bugs me.

    F**k. I don’t hate the word itself, but this has become overused so it has now lost its punch. I also think it indicates a loss of imagination and vocabulary. There are other words that can express outrage in our world of political malfunction and unhappiness. Just too much f**kery is now attached to this word. We can do better.

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  9. You stand up and talk in a church today and always someone will criticize your choice of words.
    Clyde who fears to talk about genders or relationships

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    1. I have a 24-year-old granddaughter, who has yet to decide if she is _______ or _________. Every time I use words I get corrected. I did in a Bible __________ (now I don’t know what to call that) this morning online. A bunch of liberals gave me different words in authorities tones.

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        2. Could you whisper them to me? I promise not to tell anyone.

          Seriously, Clyde, I’m not sure I know what you’re taking about. In the above quote: “I have a 24-year-old granddaughter, who has yet to decide if she is _______ or _________.” I’m assuming the missing words relate to her sexuality or gender identification, but in either case that shouldn’t be that hard to come to grips with as far as the vocabulary is concerned. Now, how you relate to it emotionally, that might be a whole different ballgame.

          This may be new territory for you to navigate, Clyde, and if I can help by giving you some different perspectives, send me an email. This need not be the cause of a lot of family trauma.

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  10. I don’t mind the Ladies or Girls designation as much as I once did, but I don’t use it myself, prefer Women. The guy I’m thinking of who uses it isn’t a chauvinist, and he calls his group of guys the Old Gents.

    I can’t remember if I saw “Church Basement Ladies”, but I did see “The Ladies Who Lunch” somewhere…

    I know there are words that irritate – some have already been covered above.
    Thinking…

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  11. Edgerton is a predominantly Dutch community just north of Luverne. Its high school mascot name is the Flying Dutchmen, given well before women’s sports. I giggle when I think of what a Lady Dutchman might look like. Same thing goes for the former name of the team mascot at Dickinson State back in ND. They used to be the Savages. Lady Savages conjures up wonderful images. Now they are the Blue Hawks.

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  12. I just lit a production of CBL this past winter. My first opportunity to deal with the show.
    Recently someone referred to it as CBL and I didn’t know what they were talking about. Took me two days to come up with Church Basement Ladies. It was a so so Show. This particular production had a lot of issues for a “serious” theater person like myself. Costumes, blocking, staging, set, the lightboard operator whom I went up and yelled at during a rehearsal. “STOP ADDING THINGS! JUST PUSH “GO”!” (And he said “I’m not adding things!” as he pulled down some lighting sliders… busted!)
    But It is mindless entertainment and I’m sure it sold well.

    I tease Padawan with the word– more specifically how I SAY the word, “Mmmmoist”. It grosses him out. And I learned it from someone else. So then he gives me his impression of the felon. tRump. The orange one. The Idiot.
    And I hate that so we’re even. He doesn’t support him at all, he just does it to mess with me.

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