hospitals), lunch lady (American English) or dinner lady (British English), cleaning lady for cleaner (formerly known as a charwoman or charlady), and so on. Generic words for humans Another issue for gender-neutral language concerns the use of the words man, men and mankind to refer to a person or people of unspecified sex or to persons of both sexes. Although the word man originally referred to both males and females, some feel that it no longer does so unambiguously. In Old English, the word wer referred to males only and wif to females only, while man referred to both, although in practice man was sometimes also used in Old English to refer only to males. In time, wer fell out of use, and man came to refer sometimes to both sexes and sometimes to males only; "[a]s long as most generalizations about men were made by men about men, the ambiguity nestling in this dual usage was either not noticed or thought not to matter." By the 18th century, man had come to refer primarily to males; some writers who wished to use the term in the older sense deemed it necessary to spell out their meaning. Anthony Trollope, for example, writes of "the infinite simplicity and silliness of mankind and womankind", and when "Edmund Burke, writing of the French Revolution, used men in the old, inclusive way, he took pains to spell out his meaning: 'Such a deplorable havoc is made in the minds of men (both sexes) in France....'" Proponents of gender-neutral language argue that seemingly generic uses of the word "man" are often not in fact generic. Miller and Swift illustrate with the following quotation: As for man, he is no different from the rest. His back aches, he ruptures easily, his women have difficulties in childbirth.... "If man and he were truly generic, the parallel phrase would have been he has difficulties in childbirth", Miller and Swift comment. Writing for the American Philosophical Association, Virginia L. Warren follows Janice Moulton and suggests truly generic uses of the word man would be perceived as "false, funny, or insulting", offering as an example the sentence "Some men are female." Further, some commentators point out that the ostensibly gender-neutral use of man has in fact sometimes been used to exclude women: Thomas Jefferson did not make the same distinction in declaring that "all men are created equal" and "governments