Distaff

distaff







Y

D



–noun 

1. a staff with a cleft (p.p. of cleave) end for holding wool, flax (亞麻), etc., from which the thread is drawn in spinning by hand.

2. a similar attachment on a spinning wheel.

3. Archaic.

a. a woman or women collectively.

b. woman's work. 



–adjective 

4. Sometimes Offensive. noting, pertaining to, characteristic of, or suitable for a woman; female. 





C



distaff (adj., n.) 

   

A distaff is the staff for holding flax or wool when you spin thread in the timeless classical method; as the man’s staff or spear was the symbol of his activities and person in the classical world, so the distaff was the woman’s, and so distaff remains, mainly in adjectival use, a synonym for female or woman or women. 



Reference to the distaff side is a cliché of some stature and tradition in subjects ranging from literature and politics to horseracing and the family, and thus far the term appears not to have been challenged as sexist language, although it is clearly exclusive. It continues in full Standard use, although some may consider it old-fashioned.





　

Are you tough enough to take the naked truths that Neil LaBute dishes out? 



Having tried his hand at feel-good comedy and posh literary adaptation with Nurse Betty and Possession, the prolific LaBute returns to the he-man emotional cruelty of his first two movies and recent theater work.



The Shape of Things—directed by LaBute from his 2001 play, with the same four actors re-creating their roles—may be considered a distaff version of In the Company of Men. It's a calculated bit of sexual bait-and-switch in which predatory humans toy with each other to achieve their own carnivorous [ends]. 





Sapphic

booth bunny 

cattle market

ecdysiast

demimonde

Drama about an American doctor's desperate search for his kidnapped wife through the [demi]-monde of Paris,

weep

her fussing, her weeping, her [rashes] on hands and head.

snivel

to weep or cry with sniffling

The hero doesn't [snive]l and [pine]

Nubile



tawdry

There's a hyper-real, if unavoidably airbrushed, quality to her loving reconstructions of Bettie's iconic poses and Klaw's [tawdry] scenarios.

and that is what Malick founds his film on, not [tawdry] stories of love and adventure.

garnish

garish

Garish yet restrained, "Eastern Promises" has scarcely a wasted set-up.

meritorious

meretricious

tawdry like a prostitute

Foul though the film is, and as [meretricious] as it may be in its meditation on the nature of staged and actual violence

a provocative, if [meretricious], evening of theater that ends in a [paroxysm] of LaButality with a bear [swipe] to the spectator's head.

Smock