Cycling up the street today and a man comes flying out of a side-road, on the wrong side of the road, causing me to brake and swerve away. I call out “Steady on. You still have to obey the rules of the road you know”. He stops his bike and yells after me a torrent of abuse involving the word “hysterical”. Was more outraged at the use of the female-baiting word “hysterical” than I was at the near-collision, coming as it does from the Latin hystericus (“of the womb”). This was a condition thought to be exclusive to women – sending them uncontrollably and neurotically insane owing to a dysfunction of the uterus. I know what is likely to send me uncontrollably and neurotically insane and it’s not my uterus, pal!
