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The builders’ merchants have a “no reversing without a banksman” sign. What’s the gender neutral equivalent? “No reversing without a banker”?

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in reply to Alexandra Lanes

Wierdly, istr that both kinds of banks have different etymological roots. Not that this impacts on your question but non-cognates which are homophones and homographs are discombobulating.
in reply to Alexandra Lanes

They sound like they'd reverse the charges.
I mean obviously banksbod. From Wiktionary, USian apparently has 'spotter'?
Aus/NZ apparently has 'dogman' for this sort of rôle (at least as regards cranes specifically), sometimes 'dogger'. Perhaps we shouldn't try to import that one.
in reply to WOMUMP

@womump "spotter" makes so much more sense (wonder how related it is in this context to its usage in circuit racing like NASCAR and rallycross, where the latter demonstrates it's not purely USian)
in reply to Alexandra Lanes

I've noticed lots of industrial signs are starting to say "staff" rather than either "men" or "workers".

I quite like Bankstaff, sounds like a minor Shakespearean role.

in reply to kæt

@chiffchaff How do you refer to just one of them? "No reversing without a bankstave", maybe. Like 'knave'.
@kæt
in reply to WOMUMP

@womump Ah yes, Black Rod never has that problem, do they? stave sounds excellent to me.!
in reply to kæt

@kæt I use “bod” but I accept that’s likely to remain an idiolectal quirk!
@kæt
in reply to Alexandra Lanes

I do like bod. "folk" would be quite nice if it didn't have an embarrassing cognate in German.
in reply to kæt

@chiffchaff There's also a lot of tension in US English about this kind of use of "folk" being characteristic of AAE and therefore appropriative if used by non-AAE speakers.
@kæt
in reply to kæt

@chiffchaff I don't think that's enough to disqualify it for use in English.
@kæt
in reply to kæt

@chiffchaff Bod was my second choice after "human" which has an obvious failure case in "post-human".
@kæt
in reply to ceb

@ceb @kæt In speech the stress falls differently…. The post’human ‘posthuman.
@ceb @kæt
in reply to Adam

@pseudomonas @molybdomantic Banksy would be fun, 😄 . You could then sell the signs to art dealers afterwards.
@ceb @Adam
in reply to ceb

@molybdomantic Post-Bod: When the Milkshake Runs Dry. The Commissioning of Childrens Television in the late 1980s.
@ceb

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