[♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪

Grammar girl here, I'm Manion Foggedy.

This week, I have a quick and dirty tip about how to spell blonde

and a meaty middle about some United States pioneer history

and how we got the word, Trollop.

And now, on to the show.

It sounds like a joke, but it's actually a legitimate question.

How do you spell blonde?

The word originally came into English from Old French

where it has masculine and feminine forms.

As an English noun, it kept those two forms.

Thus, a blonde without a knee is a fair-haired male

and a blonde with an knee is a fair-haired female.

When you're using the word as an adjective, blonde without a knee

is the more common spelling and can be used for men or women,

especially in the United States.

However, blonde with an knee can also be used to describe a woman with fair hair

as in go ask the blonde woman at table two if she wants pepper on her salad.

Some people think it's sexist to use blonde with an e to refer to women,

but the AP style book currently says to maintain the distinction

between the two gendered forms of the word if you use it.

And the Chicago Manual of Style also seems to uphold the difference.

...