chairman
A chairman is the leader of a committee or parliamentary body. The origin is, as one might guess, a compound of the words chair + man. The chair is a reference to a seat or position of authority and the man is, of course, a reference to the person who occupies it. The word dates to 1654 when it appears in John Trapp’s Commentary of the Book of Job:
I sate chief, and was Chair-man.
In more recent times the word has come under criticism for being sexist as not all such leaders are male. A backlash by those who want to preserve the old patterns of speech has resulted in some propagating a false etymology that states the -man is not a reference to a person at all and is, therefore, not sexist. This ill-informed view states that the -man comes from the Latin manus, meaning hand, that the chairman is the hand of the one sitting in the chair guiding the meeting. This is complete bunk.
(Source Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition)
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Copyright 1997-2008, by David Wilton
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Ok - I heard this one too:
In the late 1700s, many houses consisted of a large room with
> only one chair. Commonly, a long wide board folded down from the
> wall, and was used for dining. The “head of the household” always
> sat in the chair while everyone else ate sitting on the floor.
> Occasionally a guest, who was usually a man, would be invited to sit
> in this chair during a meal. To sit in the chair meant you were
> important and in charge. They called the one sitting in the chair
> the “chair man.” Today in business, we use the expression or title
> “Chairman” or “Chairman of the Board.”