Comment by donotsurveil
11 years ago
English is not my mother tongue so maybe that's why I don't get the humor here, what wordplay are you talking about ?
man is short for manual following a unix tradition, bro is a word associated with despicable attitude and stupid behavior holding those as life goals which has absolutely no link with its actual use.
There is no way I'm sharing my library of command examples I built for myself over the years with this ill-named initiative.
"man" is the English term for "an adult human male".
"bro" is short for "brother", and is a thing a certain set of English-speaking adolescent and adult males call each other to express their affection for each other.
"man" is a shortening of "manual", used to name a Unix command which will show you the docs for a command-line tool.
"bro" is a Unix command which will show you a brief example of how to use a command-line tool and nothing else. If you're lucky it may be exactly what you want to do. But probably not.
So the wordplay here: two three-letter words for a particular kind of guy, for Unix commands that tell you how to use other commands. And if they decide to change the name based on people objecting to the cultural assumptions they see in "bro", I'd suggest "guy". Or maybe "dude", which is a little longer, but always feels more laid-back and chilled-out to me than what "bro" has become.
Hope that helps!
No, bro is short for "brother", which is a male gendered person who has the same parent as you.
Brother and sister are the gendered names for children having the same parents.
"bro", in this case is short for "brother".
It's not that simple. I think it originated in surfer culture, as a kind of appropriation of Black American culture to call each other brother and sister. In the 90s, on the west coast, it was common among white hippies, deadheads and surfers to call each other "brah."
That said, I don't know where African Americans got it from, but labor unions used the terms brother and sister going back to their beginnings in the 1800s. So it may have been copied from that.
Anyway, I think it migrated from surfer culture to fratboy culture. There, it acquired a tinge of elitism and sexism, because... well, frats are elitist and sexist.
Ha! You got not just one, but TWO careful completely disingenuous replies.
"Bro" is short for brother the same way that "gay" means "happy". Well, sure, that's trivially true, but it kind of matters what people actually mean when they use a word.
Of course you're right; I have a biological brother and we don't call each other "bro". Here's what google turns up: http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/06/21/193881290/jea... ...though I'm sure a bit more searching will find more direct treatments out there of what "bro" means....
As far as I (from the UK) can tell, this is largely a US (North American?) term, rather than one with much use in any other English-speaking country. Some example usage: the phrase "bro's before hoe's" is a hilarious exchange amongst a group of 'men', implying that men are to be valued above women, who are all sexually promiscuous anyway (and, by the way, that's bad when it comes to women, as opposed to being something to be admired in a 'bro').
Those are the kind of connotations conjured in my mind when I see the name of this software tool.
I had actually taken 'bros before hos' as a reminder of the importance of maintaining your long term friends whilst romantically engaged, expressed through the medium of gender-loaded words that rhyme and assuming the heteronormative paradigm.
My interpretation was that there was no value judgement being made and that this could be equally well articulated using any rhyming words that could indicate a romantic coupling (I've also heard 'chicks before dicks'). That was how I thought about it, but I don't get to choose who feels offended or marginalised by my usage.
Thinking about it now though I've also heard 'mates before dates' which I take to be neutral. Is that a safe way to express the pithy sentiment of prioritising your friends?
Sure, the phrase certainly has the meaning you refer to, and probably primarily has that meaning, it's just the fact that it comes loaded with other nasty connotations I don't like. If you wish to express a preference for friends over romantic partners, though, I think "mates before dates" is pretty fantastic :)