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For the same reason it is called mankind not menkind. This is the domain of man not men - men is gendered the term man is not. Woman is being used as a plural. This is common parlance. Both "this is a woman and women thing" are routinely used in everyday speech. It is not a pronunciation issue in this answer but could be in their question.
The singular “woman” probably gets mixed up with the plural “women” because although both are spelled with an O in the first syllable, only the pronunciation of the O really differentiates them. Just remember that this word is treated no differently than “man” (one person) and “men” (more than one person).
Women is the plural of woman, so there cannot be a plural of women. However, you will see this simple truth ignored everywhere you look: Womens Clothing Department. Womens Restroom, Mens Restroom (signs on doors that say WOMENS and MENS) — wrong!!! Womens Issues, Womens Lib, etc. Do not let these mistakes that other people make confuse or ...
'woman late O.E. wimman (pl. wimmen), lit. "woman-man"' That makes no sense. If woman means woman-man then perforce woman-man means woman-woman-man and woman-woman-man means woman-woman-woman-man. 2. We are also told: 'The pronunciation of the singular altered in M.E. by the rounding influence of -w-; the plural retains the original vowel.'
For instance, if you write "woman poet" it could imply that Emily Dickinson only wrote poems about women. What you should write is "woman-poet", indicating she is a woman and a poet. On a side note, you could also use a solidus "woman/poet" to indicate she was both a great woman AND a great poet, not just a great poet who happened to be a woman.
a) Many woman students smoked cigarettes. OR. b) Many women students smoked cigarettes. I have read all the related posts - they are all helpful but doesn't answer my specific question. As a general rule, the first noun is often singular as in "girl students" and not "girls students" but there are exceptions to this rule, for instance, "women ...
I don't think the NZ pronunciation of the singular is the same as the NZ plural. A New Zealander begs to differ: I've noticed this trend over the last few years also. To me as a kiwi it doesn't sound anything like a mispronounced plural -- it just sounds as if the speaker is using the one word for both singular and plural.
When I typed the search into Google most of the responses were websites selling clothing and the ratio of womens versus women's was about 1:1. Searching for mens versus men's and the version with
According to the dictionary, man can refer to both men and women. Take this example: Understanding the laws of physics allows a man to understand the world around him in profound ways. Is this
Is "woman/women" the only English word group that undergoes a change - via conjugation, pluralization... whatever may be the cause - wherein a syllable of the polysyllabic word has spelling changes that do not have a significant change to its pronunciation (i.e. the "-man" and "-men" sound as "mun" in both cases), while simultaneously having ...