zlacker

>>GavCo+(OP)
> A most formidable female -> A most formidable woman

What is the reasoning for this? Not following what is "wrong" in the original.

>>gedy+rl
In current American English, “female” has shifted to usually being an adjective, woman is a noun. Referring to people by noun-ing one of the adjectives that describes them is something considered reductive by a chunk of the population.

If someone is a fan of “female” as a noun: I’m not going to change your mind. I get that changing language is annoying sometimes. I’m pointing out that “female” as a noun does bother some people, “woman” only bothers people if they know it’s been changed and see it as bowing to PC pressure. Since most people don’t check the diffs from one edition to another when buying books, this is a really easy decision on the part of the publisher, who just wants to quietly make money for the most part.

>>bee_ri+o41
> Referring to people by noun-ing one of the adjectives that describes them

The noun sense of female well precedes (going back to its Latin roots) the adjectival sense of the word. [1] The adjectival sense came from the noun, the exact reverse of what you are saying.

And this pattern of adjectives coming from nouns (e.g. leafy, greasy, beautiful, harmful, dangerous, adventurous) is common, while the reverse is not (I'm hard put to think of even one example). So what you are saying here is a nonsense, with no scholarly basis to it.

[1] https://www.etymonline.com/word/female#etymonline_v_5841