Good page, Jon! Personally I don't mind being called 'luv, duck, hinny, pet' etc. Not so keen on 'madam' though as it feels fawning or sneering; these days makes me check for the wrinkles too! My Husband was taken aback by a West Country taxi driver calling him 'lover' though. Fact is we don't have in English a form of address for strangers which is polite and classless, like the French and others do. However it does lead to those wonderful regional words.

Let's take a more realistic look at all this PC stuff. In Alice somewhere it says that words mean what you want them to mean. The same word can be offensive or affectionate depending on the circumstances, speaker and listener. Like the Austrailians use of 'bastard'. Let's just be careful and considerate perhaps.

Some councils here in the UK have banned the word 'Christmas' even.

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