Pete Letkeman wrote:. . . I wonder what the term "Men" means in this instance? . . .
It means that the English language hasn't got a
word for men‑as‑opposed‑to‑women. Latin has. German has.
Language | Man as opposed to woman | Man as opposed to animal |
---|
Latin | vir | homo |
German | Mann | Mensch |
English | ??? | man |
So your suggestion that it means all people is correct. Now, the singular of people is of course, person. But that isn't helpful because person doesn't really translate to the German Mensch. And it is possible to be a person without being human.
At least, that is what it was like when I was young. Between the 1970s and 1990s however, at least in England, the word
man changed its meaning totally, to mean man‑as‑opposed‑to‑woman. So the table now reads
Language | Man as opposed to woman | Man as opposed to animal |
---|
Latin | vir | homo |
German | Mann | Mensch |
English | man | ??? |
Yes, I know you can say things like, “person,” but that isn't quite accurate, or, “human,” which is an ugly term. The same applies to the personal pronoun
he, which was common gender when I was at school, but is now solely masculine to most people; we often use
they as a common gender pronoun nowadays.
Anyway, English grammatical rant and gross oversimplification over. Yes, voting has gradually been extended to the whole population in this country. The supremacy of Parliament was established here about 450 years ago, but only the people Tim H mentions were invited to vote. In UK, one hundred years ago all men (as opposed to women) were invited to vote, and within a few decades all women over twenty‑one. Because of the vagaries of the system for registration to vote, many people didn't vote until well after the age of twenty‑one. One hour before the
epoch, that changed in UK because the voting age was changed to eighteen, and voting rights started on one's eighteenth birthday.