Language Log

Nineteen years ago, the well-preserved body of a young woman who died at the age of 25 around 2,500 years ago was recovered from the permafrost of a kurgan (burial mound) of the Pazyryk Culture high on the Ukok Plateau of the Altai Republic, a part of the Russian Federation.  Nearby were the bodies of two warriors who guarded her in death.

Earlier archeological excavations in the same area had recovered the frozen remains or other individuals belonging to the Pazyryk Culture, including one who is referred to as a chief.  All of these ice mummies bore elaborate tattoos on their bodies, and these were the subject of a recent, spectacularly illustrated article in the Daily Mail (August 14, 2012) that was occasioned by the transfer of the remains of the "princess" to a permanent glass sarcophagus in the National Museum in Gorno-Altaisk, capital of the Altai Republic.

Reader TM writes:

A language anomaly of sorts that has entertained me for some time is the term "grown man."

First, it's a term that we use ONLY in circumstances where someone is, in fact, not acting like a grown man; yet the use of the term is literal, not ironic. E.g., "I can't believe that a grown man would act this way." The term is not used in any other context, as far as I know.

Second, there is no such term as "grown woman." No one ever says that.