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gement of man – woman word order follows the same rule, which indicates that men are superior and women inferior. But there is an exception in ladies and gentlemen, which just conveys the historical tradition of the Medieval Times that ladies were considered tender and weak, thus were to be protected by chivalrous knights. 2.4 Semantic derogation of women One of the major concerns to feminist language critics is the semantic asymmetry that exists between nouns and terms referring to women and men. English words used to refer to women are often “sexually weighted”. An indication of the sexualization of women in English is the many more ways of describing women than men, in terms of their sexuality, which the language seems to have. Schulz reports the findings of two investigators who, as part of a larger study of slang, managed to collect over 500 synonyms for prostitute, such as hooker, hustler, erring sister, fallen woman, a woman of the streets, strange woman, Dutch widow, harlot, wench, the oldest profession, shady ladies, chicken ranchers, tram, pavement princess, soiled dove, and so on; but only 65 for the masculine sexual term whoremonger, such as client, goat, satyr, lecher, customer, etc. Feminine words have acquired sexual connotations while the masculine words retain a serious businesslike aura. For example, a callboy is the person who calls actors when it is time for them to go on stage, but a call girl is a prostitute. Compare sir and madam. Sir is a term of respect, while madam has acquired the specialized meaning of a brothel manager. Something similar has happened to master and mistress and to widow and widower. Their meanings are changing with the development of society. Here are some examples: (5) He is the master of his fate. (6) Catherine declined to be his mistress, and returned to her husband. (7) Mary is Jack’s widow. (8) *Jack is Mary’s widower. As we can see that different from mistress in (6) master is nonsexual. Now it generally refers to a man who has power over others or who has acquired excellent ability in some field. One（ie. man）is a master could master by himself while a mistress must be ‘somebody’s’. And compare (7) and (8), (7) is by all means acceptable, while (8) is generally considered abnormal. Widow commonly occurs with a possessive – the name of the women’s husband – to precede it, implying that a wife belongs to the husband, even if he is dead. As for a husband, he is always independent in any situation; therefore widower does not allow the name of the wife to precede it. Widower is not used in other phrases or contexts, but widow is seen in widowhood, widow's peak, and widow's walk. In English there are terms for man and woman who remain single at the age of marriage: bachelor for man and spinster for woman. Denotatively, both mean “one who is not married”. Bachelor is a neutral term often used as a compliment while spinster, usually one who is no longer young and/or seems unlikely to marry, is always used pejoratively, suggesting to many people someone old, gray, ugly and unable to ‘get a man’. So spinster appears to be rarely used nowadays; bachelor, however, usually has positive connotations, such as bachelor party (光棍汉舞会), bachelor club (光棍汉俱乐部), bachelor mother (单身母亲), bachelor’s wife (理想妻子), bachelor dinner (单身汉宴会), etc. The society holds quite different views on unmarried man and unmarried woman. So when referring to an old unmarried woman, we often use a bachelor girl or a ca