What women talk about

What women talk about

There are some topics men do not dwell on

Researchers in the US have laid waste to the long-held belief that women talk more than men.

But the survey did find that female subjects get through an average of 16,215 words a day, compared with their male counterparts' 15,669, a difference of 546.

So what might those words be? The Magazine has consulted a handful of females, and come up with a few suggestions of words - 46 to be precise (listed below). But what might the others be? Use the form at the bottom of this page to help flesh out some of the remaining 500. We'll present the best ones on Monday.

Forty-six words women might say, men probably wouldn't:

• Book club: A female dominated affair, perhaps because women read more fiction, or perhaps because men aren't very good at talking about it
• Accessorize: If men were ever to use this word it would only be in the context of cars
• Body image
• Empowering: Men never use this word, perhaps because for the 200,000 years humans have been on the planet, men have had all the power
• Burlesque: Something involving strip-tease that can apparently involve the above
• Size zero
• Home birth
• Pilates: Men in the UK, particularly, seem to have no interest in building up their core strength
• Pomegranate: Men seem ill-equipped to understand the significance and full range of superfoods

  

  Differing vocabularies can be a source of disagreement

• Cellulite
• Absolutely beautiful: The words women often use to describe friends who are not
• Conventionally attractive: Preceded by "well I suppose she is...", a phrase women often use to describe those who actually are
• Jesse Metcalfe: A walking Athena poster, see above
• Footless tights: Strange idea, strangely popular
• Breastfeeding
• Emotional intelligence: Something that men usually do not possess, instead preferring the kind of intelligence that involves dates of battles
• Kitten heels: Or indeed heels of any other kind
• What are you thinking?: The classic female condition check
• Feminism: If even veteran feminists can't agree on what this means then it's probably best avoided by men
• Afghanistan: A place where the debate is rather starker
• Agony aunt: When men seek answers to life-changing problems in magazines, it tends to be under the headline "plasma or LCD?"
• Airbrushing: The process by which magazine picture editors oppress women in an underhand way
• Flexible working
• Handbagging: As in new Commons leader Harriet Harman's request to Theresa May not to savage her every Thursday
• Beefeater: The first female one made her debut this year
• Babies
• Superwoman
• Ms: Extraordinarily, the battle continues for women to be allowed to avoid definition by their marital status
• Middleton: As in Kate. Style icon or harassed paparazzo target?
• Concealer
• Why: As in "why do you never call?"