There is no need to take it personally. Or so the Académie Française would say. It is all a matter of language. The venerable watchdog of the French language has corrected the widespread practice of using ‘le’, the masculine indicator, for Covid-19 by pointing out that it should be ‘la’, feminine, because ‘covid’ is feminine in grammatical gender. In spite of the slight sense of light-headedness that this pronouncement might induce among not just those fighting the infection but also the thousands fighting to control it — what does gender matter, and not even of the virus, only its name? — there is no reason, the Académie and all similar academies may argue, to lower the standards of linguistic correctness. Malady is feminine in French, and ‘covid’ is the acronym of ‘coronavirus disease’, which should therefore be feminine. It should not be mixed up with the cause of the disease, coronavirus, which — perhaps because it is the mover? — is masculine. The Académie deplores this error, and sees no reason why the acronym should not have its correct gender returned to it.

Grammar is presumably impersonal. So the gender of Covid-19 can have possibly nothing to do with the fact that the members of Académie Française wear embroidered uniforms and cocked hats with a feather, carry swords and are called the Immortals. Out of the 35 members at present, five are women. The feminine gender was allowed to enter the Académie in the 1980s, although the institution dates back to 1635. Women do not carry swords. The swords, perhaps, cut down lawless grammatical outgrowths with no mercy, presumably no job for a woman. No wonder that the Académie took its time, till last year, to allot the feminine article to professional people such as doctors and teachers. But the strikingly apparelled grammar monitors alone should not be blamed for ascribing femininity to an infection. The woman as the doorway to an unpleasant afterlife is an image that long precedes even a date as old as 1635. Feminine blandishments, therefore, however full of pretty frills and appealing fancies, were seldom considered innocent: more alluring traps than promises of bliss. Just one step away from dangerous infections, obviously.

Gender attributions in grammar can be puzzling, and not in any one language alone. Some Indian languages are equally enigmatic. For example, in one a stationary train is female and a running one is male — or is it the other way round? What is ambiguous, however, is the attribution of femaleness to many infectious diseases in folk legends under the umbrella of ancient religions. It is not just the goddess of snakes who must be appeased, for she alone can protect the devotee from snakebite, but also the deities of, say, cholera or smallpox, figures of female power who both represent the diseases and save their worshippers from them. The Immortals of Académie Française are not to blame, surely?