A businessperson is a generic term for someone who is employed at a profit-oriented enterprise, or more specifically, someone who is involved in the management (at any level) of a company. The term businessperson almost always refers to someone with a "white collar" occupation. Look up Management in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... The term company may refer to a separate legal entity, as in English law, or may simply refer to a business, as is the common use in the United States. ... White-collar workers perform tasks which are less physically laborious yet often more highly paid than blue-collar workers, who do manual work. ...
Businessperson is used by some in place of the words businessman or businesswoman to avoid the perception of discrimination based on sex (otherwise known as sexism) and to avoid unnecessarily perpetuating stereotypes if used generically.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] Manifestations Slavery · Racial profiling · Lynching Hate speech · Hate crime · Hate groups Genocide · The Holocaust · Armenian Genocide · Pogrom Ethnocide · Ethnic cleansing · Race war Religious persecution · Gay bashing Blood libel · Black Legend Pedophobia · Ephebiphobia Movements Discriminatory Aryanism · Neo-Nazism · Ku Klux Klan National Party (South Africa) American Nazi Party Kahanism · Supremacism Anti... Manifestations Slavery · Racial profiling · Lynching Hate speech · Hate crime · Hate groups Genocide · Holocaust · Pogrom Ethnocide · Ethnic cleansing · Race war Religious persecution · Gay bashing Pedophobia · Ephebiphobia Movements Discriminatory Aryanism · Neo-Nazism · Supremacism Kahanism Anti-discriminatory Abolitionism · Civil rights LGBT rights Womens/Universal suffrage · Feminism Mens/Fathers rights · Masculinism Children...
The terms businessman or businesswoman are sometimes used for gender specificity,[9][10] or when "businessperson" is regarded as an expression of political correctness. Political correctness is the alteration of language to redress real or alleged injustices and discrimination or to avoid offense. ...
A business magnate, sometimes referred to as a mogul, tycoon, or industrialist, is a person who has reached a prominent place in a particular industry (or set of industries) and whose wealth has been derived primarily therefrom. ... For the computer game previously called Entrepreneur, see The Corporate Machine. ... Financier (IPA: /Ëfi nãn Ësjei/) is an elegant term for a person who handles large sums of money, usually involving money lending, financing projects, large-scale investing, or large-scale money management. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Business magnate. ... List of corporate leaders: Joe Ackermann - Deutsche Bank William Maxwell Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook- newspaper magnate Arthur Andersen - Arthur Andersen Kunitake Ando - Sony John Jacob Astor - Fur trading and real estate Nitchell Baker - Mozilla Corporation Percy Barnevik - Investor Bernard Baruch - Financier, Investor, Presidential advisor Andy Bechtolsheim - Sun Microsystems Silvio Berlusconi... Gender-neutral language is a description of language usages which are aimed at minimizing assumptions regarding the biological sex of human referents. ...
^ University of Windsor (1993). University of Windsor - Employment Equity - Language Equity Guide. University of Windsor Employment Equity Office. Retrieved on 7 January2007.
^ Ferguson, Chantelle (January 2004). "Sexist Language Persists in the EFL Classroom". English Teaching Forum42 (1): 36-41. Retrieved on 7 January2007.
^ The American Heritage Book of English Usage (1996). ยง 23. -man compounds. 5. Gender. The American Heritage Book of English Usage. 1996. Bartleby.com. Retrieved on 7 January2007.
Businessperson redirects here, and Businessperson is mentioned in the article.
As it's not the only word in the English language with multiple meanings, there is nothing wrong with the generic use of "man." Women who believe that they have been treated in a manner unsupportive of equality need to refer to their dictionary.
Argh, this is actually not true, as the number of redirects from businessman is included in the businessperson count.
Certainly, there are rare exceptions where the entrepreneur and the businessperson are one in the same -- Ken Olsen, Amar Bose, Bob Swanson to name a few, but it takes a mighty big person to have his or her head soaring in the stars and feet planted on the ground at the same time.
The businessperson, on the other hand, must be a planner, organizer, not reliant on instinct but on data, capable of making difficult tradeoffs and clearly more realistic and risk averse.
For his or her part, the businessperson must repeatedly differentiate the possible from the impossible and deliver the often times unpleasant message to the company.