Meno-pause - Really

A thought struck me the other day.

Whoever coined the term menopause was clearly more concerned with polite phrasing than biological accuracy. Pause, they said, as if the whole business of menstruation just takes a little breather before returning refreshed, like a tea break. It doesn’t. It stops. Full stop. No pause, no restart, no "see you next month." Done and dusted.

But language loves a euphemism, doesn’t it? Death becomes "passing," bald becomes "follicly challenged," and the permanent cessation of menstruation gets dressed up as a temporary intermission. Perhaps Charles-Pierre-Louis de Gardanne, the 19th-century French physician who popularised the term, thought menostop sounded too harsh. The Victorians did like to soften the blow of anything remotely connected to women’s bodies.

Yet the reality is far from a pause. Hormones fluctuate, cycles stutter, and eventually, the shop closes for good. If we were being honest, we'd call it menofinish, menodone, or even meno-thanks-very-much. But no, we get pause—a word that suggests limbo rather than finality. It’s the linguistic equivalent of pretending the sun’s just nipped behind a cloud when it’s actually set.

Of course, this isn’t just about biology. It’s about how society frames women's experiences: soften the language, downplay the impact, make it sound less definitive. A pause sounds manageable, almost gentle. A stop? That’s too final, too real, too much like admitting that time marches on, indifferent to delicate sensibilities.

So, here’s to calling things what they are. Menopause isn’t a pause—it’s the end of an era, with all the hormonal fanfare and physiological fireworks that come with it. Let’s at least give it a name that respects the reality, rather than tiptoeing around it with linguistic fluff.