what does ex mean?

I bring this up since I see various threads about people's ex's.

.. most of which weren't involved enough to be a couple, much less to be ex.

What am I getting at, not all exes are equal.

i used it before...and i was with my girlfriend for 4 years, i think that qualifies

Yes, sure does.

I guess I've just always used it as the person you hung out with and made out with and whatever and... well now you don't

I guess part of the reason that we use "ex" so frequently is simply that now boyfriend and girlfriend are used so frequently. It's now perfectly commonplace that until you're 16 or 18 or at uni, that you can have a boyfriend you don't even see that much. Instead of the normal you go out on a few days with somebody and then kiss them a bit and then after a while you kinda become a couple scenario, the normal thing for UK teens, if not US ones is that you say to somebody "will you be my boyfriend?" *cue very teenage puppy dog look* and THEN you start going out together and whatever.

Hehe it's nice to be past that stage at last

But my point is that because the terms boyfriend and girlfriend are used so easily, so is the word ex.

I think ex implies a relationship. Somebody who was never a boyfriend or girlfriend can't be an ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend. So if there's a name for the relationship you had, and you no longer have it, you are justified in using "ex". Otherwise, there's no reason to label the person at all.

A colleague of mine (in her mid-30's) kept referring to her "ex".
After a couple of months I found out it was a guy she dated for 5 weeks.
Ex doesn't seem like the right term to me, but I don't think I get to decide how she defines her relationships.

I do get to make a puzzled face on occasion though.

We just used to call them 'old boyfriends', not exes.

I guess it is just a change of word usage that rings oddly to me.

I agree with Osso (really, this time you actually said it)

I don't think I've every called an old boyfriend any but an old boyfriend.

I have an ex-husband, but I don't call him simply "my ex" If I need to refer to him, I call him my ex-husand. - Actually, I call him something else I won't go into here.

Two other terms that bother me....You don't hear this too often (than God) but I get this feeling of "i wish I hadn't just heard that) when someone calls their husband there "hubby"

bleeeeccch.

The other one is calling someone their "lover" when they are being referred to in conversations.

I can't keep a straight face for that, all of a sudden I look like I just smelled some bad fish.

Well - now that you bring other words up - I always semi-cringe when I hear 'my man'. A lot of people use that now and I can see that it is a useful phrase if you are not married to your mate, but it still rings sort of like 'my dog' to my ears.

signed,
Old StickintheMud

Yeah, it sounds so flower child.

Here's an old one that sounds very sweet -

Engaged to be married.....


However, what else would you be engaged to be?

i agree with osso.
ex SHOULD mean someone who you had an intimate relationship with for a long period of time. Including friends.
I have an ex-best friend .. and that is what I call her if and when I need to speak of her. EX.
I also call my ex husband ex.
I dont call any of my teenage relationships ex's.. they were not about intimacy. They were more about the 'show' . Who was holding whos hand in the hallway between classes, who was kissing, who is passing notes to whom.. etc

Ignoring the topic for my own soapbox.

Fiance.

In my day a fiance was a gentleman who had proposed marriage and who was part of an engaged couple.

Now a "fiance" is likely to be part of an LTA--quite possibly with several children.

The Mind Boggles.

Or woman in engagement for marriage.. or don't men have fiances?

I dislike the word Fiance all together.
Mostly for the same reasons.
It has no meaning anymore .
I see it used more often then not to give power to a relationship's meaning when there really isnt any

fiance - the boy
fiancee - the girl

Still in regular use round here. One of my colleagues just left the office to have her first weekend as a fiancee.

That's how she announced it.

<nods>

Thank you for the clarification. I had spelled it fiancee and then edited in confusion. So now I know..

My wife and I still refer to each other as boyfriend and girlfriend just to be cutesy.
I have one ex wife. I refer to her as the love of my life...The Courtney Love of my life.

I can see why the abuse of the word 'ex' could get irritating.
It irritates me too sometimes.
An X should refer to someone there was something to X in the first place.
I have had lots of 'relationships', but only refer to those lasting, long intimate relationships as X's. It'd be great if everyone would do the same:)

I love the French vocab when it comes to relationships.
That is where fiance and fiancee came from; and they have a whole list of names for all kinds of relationships. They even have a name for obsessive, crazy chemical 'love'. They've got it down, baby.

The French also are the source of my favourite term for unmarried, living-together partners.

I just fell over in a happy fit about 20 years ago when my friend D said, "I'd like you to meet my sister B, and her co-vivant C". Brilliant.