[HarHarVeryFunny]

Really? How often are blonde-haired men referred to as "blondes" vs women, and if you really feel the need to use "blonde" as your adjective, but insist it's a sexless "person", then how about "blonde engineer" instead of "blonde dancer"?!

I've got nothing against blonde dancers, and am far from politically correct myself, but in a scientific article about language and Bonobos, couldn't they have chosen a more appropriate example such as "yellow banana"?

[AIPedant]

No, because "bad dancer" is used to illustrate meaning changing in a complex way; it is a person who is bad at dancing, not a bad person who is dancing. Whereas "bad banana" is a bad banana; "bad" operates the same way as "yellow" on "banana", but "bad" and "blonde" operate differently on "dancer."

Really seems like you're trying to enforce your own form of political correctness here - "PC" is associated with certain progressives, but the problem is policing language and picking fights over trivial nonsense.

[HarHarVeryFunny]

Surely bad and blonde (not intended to imply gender) are just adjectives - a dancer who is bad (at dancing), or a dancer who is blonde?

Trust me, if you met me you would not be suggesting I am PC - but this really jumped off the page at me. Such a strange example for this context!

[geoelectric]

The fact you had to clarify "at dancing" is why they're different.

Think about it as a decomposition where "dancer" means "dancing person."

In the simple case, both "blonde" and "dancing" separately modify "person." If you diagram that it’s a Y: either modifier could be removed without changing the meaning of the other, and their order isn’t important.

In the complex case, "bad" modifies "dancing," which together modify "person." That’s an ordered chain, which is more complex to build and comprehend. Your clarification illustrates the chaining and why it’d be a fundamentally different meaning if that wasn’t understood.

I’m not even touching whatever you were going for with the blonde/brunette thing. It's plain they used the example because there's no possible way hair color could be a modifier for "dancing," and they wanted something unambiguous.

[marcellus23]

> How often are blonde-haired men referred to as "blondes" vs women

Never, because men's hair is "blond".

But seriously, the original quote does not call the person "a blonde," (which indeed might offend some) but instead uses "blonde" as an adjective to describe the dancer, which is perfectly acceptable. You can have a "blond man" or a "brown-haired man" just as easily as you can have a "blonde woman".

[HarHarVeryFunny]

Well, as an example of language/syntax, any language example (including "blonde dancer") would be "acceptable", but in this context something like "fruit tree" might be more appropriate than "dumb Polack" (no offense - just a syntax example).

[marcellus23]

I honestly have no clue what kind of thought process could result in believing that "blonde dancer" is analogous to "dumb Polack." "Blonde dancer" is just not problematic, at all. It literally just means a woman who is a dancer and has blond hair. There are no slurs or insults or even negative connotations to it.