A bachelor is a man who is not and never has been married. [1]
A bachelor is first attested as the 12th-century bacheler: a knight bachelor, a knight too young or poor to gather vassals under his own banner. [2] The Old French bacheler presumably derives from Provençal bacalar and Italian baccalare, [2] but the ultimate source of the word is uncertain. [3] [2] The proposed Medieval Latin *baccalaris ("vassal", "field hand") is only attested late enough that it may have derived from the vernacular languages, [2] rather than from the southern French and northern Spanish Latin [3] baccalaria. [4] Alternatively, it has been derived from Latin baculum ("a stick"), in reference to the wooden sticks used by knights in training. [5] [6]
From the 14th century, the term "bachelor" was also used for a junior member of a guild (otherwise known as "yeomen") or university and then for low-level ecclesiastics, as young monks and recently appointed canons. [7] As an inferior grade of scholarship, it came to refer to one holding a "bachelor's degree". This sense of baccalarius or baccalaureus is first attested at the University of Paris in the 13th century in the system of degrees established under the auspices of Pope Gregory IX as applied to scholars still in statu pupillari. There were two classes of baccalarii: the baccalarii cursores, theological candidates passed for admission to the divinity course, and the baccalarii dispositi, who had completed the course and were entitled to proceed to the higher degrees. [8]
In the Victorian era, the term "eligible bachelor" was used in the context of upper class matchmaking, denoting a young man who was not only unmarried and eligible for marriage, but also considered "eligible" in financial and social terms for the prospective bride under discussion. Also in the Victorian era, the term "confirmed bachelor" denoted a man who desired to remain single.
By the later 19th century, the term "bachelor" had acquired the general sense of "unmarried man". The expression bachelor party is recorded 1882. In 1895, a feminine equivalent "bachelor-girl" was coined, replaced in US English by "bachelorette" by the mid-1930s. This terminology is now generally seen as antiquated, and has been largely replaced by the gender-neutral term "single" (first recorded 1964). In England and Wales, the term "bachelor" remained the official term used for the purpose of marriage registration until 2005, when it was abolished in favor of "single." [9]
Bachelors have been subject to penal laws in many countries, most notably in Ancient Sparta and Rome. [3] At Sparta, men unmarried after a certain age were subject to various penalties (Greek : ἀτιμία, atimía): they were forbidden to watch women's gymnastics; during the winter, they were made to march naked through the agora singing a song about their dishonor; [3] and they were not provided with the traditional respect due to the elderly. [10] Some Athenian laws were similar. [11] Over time, some punishments developed into no more than a teasing game. In some parts of Germany, for instance, men who were still unmarried by their 30th birthday were made to sweep the stairs of the town hall until kissed by a "virgin". [12] In a 1912 Pittsburgh Press article, there was a suggestion that local bachelors should wear a special pin that identified them as such, or a black necktie to symbolize that "....they [bachelors] should be in perpetual mourning because they are so foolish as to stay unmarried and deprive themselves of the comforts of a wife and home." [13]
The idea of a tax on bachelors has existed throughout the centuries. Bachelors in Rome fell under the Lex Julia of 18 BC and the Lex Papia Poppaea of AD 9: these lay heavy fines on unmarried or childless people while providing certain privileges to those with several children. [3] In 1695, a law known as the Marriage Duty Act was imposed on single males over 25 years old by the English Crown to help generate income for the Nine Years' War. [14] In Britain, taxes occasionally fell heavier on bachelors than other persons: examples include 6 & 7 Will. III, the 1785 Tax on Servants, and the 1798 Income Tax. [3]
It has been noted by some people such as Francis Bacon that many preeminent men throughout history have been bachelors: [15]
He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men, which, both in affection and means, have married and endowed the public.
Nikola Tesla also made a similar statement: [16]
I do not think you can name many great inventions that have been made by married men.
A study that was conducted by professor Charles Waehler at the University of Akron in Ohio on non-married heterosexual males deduced that once non-married men hit middle age, they will be less likely to marry and remain unattached later into their lives. [17] The study concluded that there is only a 1-in-6 chance that men older than 40 will leave the single life, and that after the age 45, the odds fall to 1-in-20. [17] Kenyan psychologist Florence Wamaitha noted that single men have the freedom to interact with people and hence have a deeper connection to the world and that most single males are financially stable as they do not have many family responsibilities. [18]
In certain Gulf Arab countries, "bachelor" can refer to men who are single as well as immigrant men married to a spouse residing in their country of origin (due to the high added cost of sponsoring a spouse onsite), [19] and a colloquial term "executive bachelor" is also used in rental and sharing accommodation advertisements to indicate availability to white-collar bachelors in particular. [20] [ better source needed ]
Listed chronologically by date of birth.
The term bachelorette [86] is sometimes used to refer to a woman who has never been married.
The traditional female equivalent to bachelor is spinster, which is considered pejorative and implies unattractiveness (i.e. old maid, cat lady). [86] The term "bachelorette" has been used in its place, particularly in the context of bachelorette parties and reality TV series The Bachelorette. [87]
Nikola Tesla was a Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and futurist. He is known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system.
A scientist is a person who researches to advance knowledge in an area of the natural sciences.
A bachelor party, also known as a stag weekend, stag do or stag party, or a buck's night, is a party held/arranged by the man who is shortly to enter marriage.
"Two Dogmas of Empiricism" is a paper by analytic philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine published in 1951. According to University of Sydney professor of philosophy Peter Godfrey-Smith, this "paper [is] sometimes regarded as the most important in all of twentieth-century philosophy". The paper is an attack on two central aspects of the logical positivists' philosophy: the first being the analytic–synthetic distinction between analytic truths and synthetic truths, explained by Quine as truths grounded only in meanings and independent of facts, and truths grounded in facts; the other being reductionism, the theory that each meaningful statement gets its meaning from some logical construction of terms that refer exclusively to immediate experience.
Spinster is a term referring to an unmarried woman who is older than what is perceived as the prime age range during which women usually marry. It can also indicate that a woman is considered unlikely to ever marry. The term originally denoted a woman whose occupation was to spin. A synonymous term is old maid. The closest equivalent term for males is "bachelor" or "confirmed bachelor", but this generally does not carry the same connotations in reference to age and perceived desirability in marriage.
Bachelorette (/ˌbætʃələˈrɛt/) is a term used in American English for a single, unmarried woman. The term is derived from the word bachelor, and is often used by journalists, editors of popular magazines, and some individuals. "Bachelorette" was famously the term used to refer to female contestants on the old The Dating Game TV show and, more recently, The Bachelorette.
In legal definitions for interpersonal status, a single person refers to a person who is not in committed relationships, or is not part of a civil union. In common usage, the term single is often used to refer to someone who is not involved in either any type of sexual relationship, romantic relationship, including long-term dating, engagement, marriage, or someone who is "single by choice". Single people may participate in dating and other activities to find a long-term partner or spouse.
Cloud cuckoo land is a state of absurdly, over-optimistic fantasy or an unrealistically idealistic state of mind where everything appears to be perfect. Someone who is said to "live in cloud cuckoo land" is a person who thinks that things that are completely impossible might happen, rather than understanding how things really are. It also hints that the person referred to is naive, unaware of realities or deranged in holding such an optimistic belief.
Visual reasoning is the process of manipulating one's mental image of an object in order to reach a certain conclusion – for example, mentally constructing a piece of machinery to experiment with different mechanisms. In a frequently cited paper in the journal Science and a later book, Eugene S. Ferguson, a mechanical engineer and historian of technology, claims that visual reasoning is a widely used tool used in creating technological artefacts. There is ample evidence that visual methods, particularly drawing, play a central role in creating artefacts. Ferguson's visual reasoning also has parallels in philosopher David Gooding's argument that experimental scientists work with a combination of action, instruments, objects and procedures as well as words. That is, with a significant non-verbal component.
Catherinette was a traditional French label for a woman of twenty-five years who was still unmarried by the Feast of Saint Catherine. A special celebration was offered to them on this day and everyone wished them a swift end to their single status.
The analytic–synthetic distinction is a semantic distinction used primarily in philosophy to distinguish between propositions that are of two types: analytic propositions and synthetic propositions. Analytic propositions are true or not true solely by virtue of their meaning, whereas synthetic propositions' truth, if any, derives from how their meaning relates to the world.
A priori and a posteriori are Latin phrases used in philosophy to distinguish types of knowledge, justification, or argument by their reliance on experience. A priori knowledge is independent from any experience. Examples include mathematics, tautologies and deduction from pure reason. A posteriori knowledge depends on empirical evidence. Examples include most fields of science and aspects of personal knowledge.
In Chinese tradition, a Ghost Marriage is a marriage in which one or both parties are deceased. In mainland China, the practice of Ghost Marriage involves two deceased individuals. In Taiwan and South East Asia, this practice involves with one deceased and one living.
John George Trump was an American electrical engineer, inventor and physicist. A professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 1936 to 1973, he was a recipient of the National Medal of Science and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. Trump was noted for developing rotational radiation therapy. Together with Robert J. Van de Graaff, he developed one of the first million-volt X-ray generators. He is the uncle of Donald Trump.
A bachelor tax is a punitive tax imposed on unmarried men. In the modern era, many countries do vary tax rates by marital status, so current references to bachelor taxes are typically implicit rather than explicit; and given the state of tax law is very complicated, as tax accountancy concepts like income splitting can come into play.
Sheng nu is a term popularized by the All-China Women's Federation that classifies women who remain unmarried in their late twenties and beyond. Most prominently used in China, the term has also been used colloquially to refer to women in India, North America, Europe, and other parts of Asia. The term compares unmarried women to leftover food and has gone on to become widely used in the mainstream media and has been the subject of several television series, magazine and newspaper articles, and book publications, focusing on the negative connotations and positive reclamation of the term. While initially backed and disseminated by pro-government media in 2007, the term eventually came under criticism from government-published newspapers two years later. Xu Xiaomin of The China Daily described the sheng nus as "a social force to be reckoned with" and others have argued the term should be taken as a positive to mean "successful women". The slang term, 3S or 3S Women, meaning "single, seventies (1970s), and stuck" has also been used in place of sheng nu.
"He never married" was a phrase used by British obituary writers as a euphemism for the deceased having been homosexual. Its use has been dated to the second half of the 20th century, and it may be found in coded and uncoded forms, such as when the subject never married but was not homosexual. A similar phrase is "confirmed bachelor".
During the Middle Ages in Europe, lifelong spinsters came from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds, though elite women were less likely to be single than peasants or townswomen. The category of single women does not include widows or divorcees, which are terms used to describe women who were married at one point in their lives.
Nikola Tesla patented the Tesla coil circuit on April 25, 1891. and first publicly demonstrated it May 20, 1891 in his lecture "Experiments with Alternate Currents of Very High Frequency and Their Application to Methods of Artificial Illumination" before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers at Columbia College, New York. Although Tesla patented many similar circuits during this period, this was the first that contained all the elements of the Tesla coil: high voltage primary transformer, capacitor, spark gap, and air core "oscillation transformer".
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