A minor medical mystery
How should we refer to a female with an M.D.?
Perkins writes: I’m an avid reader of your columns. Last year, I also read and enjoyed Word Court very much. Keep them coming!
I have a question about female doctor versus woman doctor. If I go see a male gastroenterologist and decide I would rather see a female gastroenterologist, would it sound more natural if I said female gastroenterologist or woman gastroenterologist? Plus, if I see a gynecologist, I would much rather see one who is a female. In that case, would it be better for me to say woman gynecologist or female gynecologist? Or what?
Perkins: Your questions are among the countless ones about English where there’s no right or wrong answer — as your phrase “would sound more natural” tells me you already know. When I looked into this, though, I was surprised to find that woman is much more commonly used before doctor, while female seems to be more common when referring to a specialist.
This pattern risks sowing confusion, however. A woman doctor is a woman who is a doctor, and more than one of them are women doctors. But a women’s doctor is probably a gynecologist, I doubt there’s any such subspecialty as a women’s gastroenterologist, and the term women’s gynecologist is redundant.
Email me with your language questions, peeves, problems, etc., at barbaraswordshop@gmail.com, and I’ll respond as soon as I can. Correspondence may be edited. If you subscribe to The Boston Globe, look for my column, “May I Have a Word,” in the Ideas section every other Sunday.