[tsimionescu]

> You may speak as you will, I do not deny that the current usage of the word “man” has acquired a secondary meaning of “adult male human” opposed to it's historical meaning of “human" and if you wish to use it as such, then I'm confident I can usually discriminate by context.

To be fair, while I consider your original wording to be pretty clear, this is wrong. According to Wikipedia, the word 'man' has adopted the meaning of 'adult male human' as its primary meaning starting with Middle English, when it displaced Old English 'wer'. There are still uses where it retains the much older meaning, but its primary meaning today is 'adult male human', and has been for a good few hundred years.

[Blikkentrekker]

I do not find that to be the case investigating the Global Web-Based Corpus, which contains modern, global internet-published English:

https://i.imgur.com/EG4zaoU.png [sadly the corpus cannot be easily linked, but one may search in it here: https://www.english-corpora.org/glowbe/]

The way I look at it, the usage therein of the word “man” to specifically discriminate sex is very rare but definitely occurs. What does occur is the use of the word “man” to refer to a specific individual, which would typically be male, but in most cases where the word “man” is used indeterminately to refer to a class, it seems to be used without regard to sex.

Apart from that the most common usage seems to simply be vocatively as address, which is also gender neutral.

I would agree that it is rare, outside of compounds, to use the word “man” in a determinate sense for a female man, such as “that man over there” which would mostly be used in a military context, but in an indeterminate context to speak of “a man in general” or “men in general”, the most common usage from context seems to be sexless to this day.

[tsimionescu]

Reading through the first 100 results, I see it mostly used to refer specifically to adult male individuals, or to "a man" meaning specifically an adult male ("would've flipped out if a weird man said some creepy remarks"). There are some uses where it may or may not be gender neutral ("you are a Spammier man than I" - may refer to a man or a woman, but it is probably used because the author is male; a woman might have written "a Spammier woman than I" instead, while also addressing both men and women).

There are also clear cases where "a man" is used to refer to "a human", such as "wheat growing taller than a man".

Rather more interestingly, if you instead search for "men", you'll see that is used essentially exclusively to mean "adult males". The only exceptions I found was "and because the greed of a few men is such that they think it is necessary that they own everything" and even there I'm not sure.

[Blikkentrekker]

> Reading through the first 100 results, I see it mostly used to refer specifically to adult male individuals, or to "a man" meaning specifically an adult male ("would've flipped out if a weird man said some creepy remarks"). There are some uses where it may or may not be gender neutral ("you are a Spammier man than I" - may refer to a man or a woman, but it is probably used because the author is male; a woman might have written "a Spammier woman than I" instead, while also addressing both men and women).

I disagree; the first uses of “man” in an indeterminate sense are these:

> down the economy, Here is the truth the republicans feel uncomfortable with a black man in the with house and a lot of voters are riding the republicans coat tail

> someday you might ask me to help you move. Or, to kill a man. # Leonard: I'll doubt he'll ask you to kill a man

> say, in 35 years of working I have almost always had at least one man who I felt " wrong " about. (the exception? Disney Studios!

> boyfriend, well husband, but either way would've flipped out if a weird man said some creepy remarks regarding me at a christmas party. To me this says

I have specifically included up till your reference, which was the first of an indeterminate usage of the word “man” that by implication is most likely gendered, whereas all the others are most likely not.

So there are three sexless ones before the first gendered one.

[tsimionescu]

I would argue that the one about 'a black man in the white house' was in fact gendered, though it is somewhat debatable. It was referencing Barack Obama specifically. If there had been a black woman president, the phrase would have definitely been written to specifically say 'a black woman in the whitehouse'. On the other hand, if it had been written before either a black man or a black woman had (tried to) become president, it may have still used 'man' in a gender less way.