PERSONKIND

noun (People and Society) The human race; humankind. (Invented as a humorous non-sexist substitute for mankind.) Etymology: Formed by substituting the non-sexist word person for man in mankind. History and Usage: It was the feminist movement of the seventies that promoted the word person--both as a freestanding word and as a word-forming element--as the successor to man in its centuries-old broader sense of 'human being'. Many of the formations which resulted, including chairperson (see chair) and statesperson, appeared awkward or even comical to those who had grown up with the forms ending in -man without ever thinking of them as referring exclusively to males, and the view was not infrequently expressed that the move towards inclusive language had gone too far too fast. It was in this context that the word personkind was coined in the early seventies as a humorous alternative for mankind, intended to ridicule the use of person- for man-. During the eighties, as the feminist view of language became more widely accepted, the word personkind retained a place in the vocabulary of English but remained largely tongue-in-cheek in its use. Sonja fights for her life and the lives of all personkind. Video Today Apr. 1986, p. 36 The artificial ring of the new alternatives (like 'personkind') is counterproductive because it is faintly ridiculous to scrupulously avoid all possible references to gender, even when no reference to a particular sex is implied. Music Technology Apr. 1990, p. 10