“Can old codgers be female?” asked Pauline Davidson after reading a recent column. “I just think I may be one.”

She’s not alone. A column last month on an old coot’s guide to codgerhood drew codgers out of the woodwork. People were actually eager to identify themselves as codgers, and several women wanted to know whether codgers could be females and, if so, whether you would call them “codgerettes.”

In my column, I defined the classic codger as “an old coot in overalls and felt hat who chewed tobacco and hung out at barber shops and filling stations and other places where he could pull up an orange crate, take a load off his feet and engage in target practice with a spittoon.” Contemporary codgers, I reckoned, are people over 50 who have yet to come to terms with popular culture. I then set forth a list of criteria that might make one a codger.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines a codger as “a somewhat eccentric man, especially an old one.”

But, to be non-sexist about it, women can be somewhat eccentric, too, and they can even be old. Ask the lady who surfs the net under the screen name “Cebee.”

“Reading down the list tumbled me ever deeper into codgerhood,” she wrote. “Can women be codgers, anyway? Codgerettes? I definitely qualify!”

Sherri Forrester and Mary Paschol, both of Piedmont, N.C., also wondered whether masculinity is a prerequisite for codgerhood.

“I’m sure that I am a codger — a 72-year-old codger,” said Mary (codgers don’t mind telling their ages).

“What would be the equivalent word for a female codger?” Sherri asked. “That’s me, most of the time.”

“I fit most of the codgerhood criteria, and so does my wife,” wrote David Noer, without a dissenting note from Mrs. Noer. “Is there a female codger counterpart?”

“I thought about my grandkids watching me work my crosswords,” wrote Pat Cox. “They shake their heads and wonder how I can work them with a pen and without a spell check. Oh, and by the way, I’ll have a Coke in a small glass bottle with a pack of peanuts on the side.”

Give that lady a gender-neutral codger’s certificate.

In my opinion, as a self-appointed arbiter of English usage, it’s time for male codgers to move over and make room on the park bench for the lady codgers.

Among females, a codger is a woman who doesn’t object to being called a lady or to having doors opened for her and restaurant seats pulled out for her. She prefers “Miss” or “Mrs.” to “Ms.”

Are they codgerettes? I don’t think so. We started adding “-ette” and “ess” to masculine descriptives way back when women were expected to stay home and alternate between pushing mops and wielding skillets while having babies. Today’s women have proved to be just as competent as men in the larger world. Women codgers want to be authentic codgers without sacrificing their feminine perks. So I say call them codgers if they have earned the title.

Another reader, whose note flew off the moving truck as we moved away from the lake and closer to town, wondered whether a “curmudgeon” might be a rough equivalent of a codger.

In my view, a codger can be a curmudgeon and a curmudgeon can be a codger, but the two aren’t necessarily the same. A curmudgeon lays an extra coating of cantankerousness over the criteria for codgerhood.

For the record, curmudgeons got here first. Nobody seems to know where the word originated, but it’s been around since Shakespeare’s time. Codgers didn’t arrive until 1758, the year James Monroe, the fifth U.S. president, was born. “Codger” seems to be descended from “cadger,” a Scottish term for a huckster or peddler. I suppose that when a highlander became too old to wield a claymore, he took up the peddler’s trade.

Webster’s defines a curmudgeon as “a crusty, ill-tempered, and usually old man.”

I’ve been called a curmudgeon before, and the title doesn’t offend me. H.L. Mencken was a curmudgeon. W.C. Fields affected curmudgeonly characteristics. So did Andy Rooney at times, though Andy was much too lovable for the epithet to stick. Archie Bunker fit the roles of codger and curmudgeon very well.

A coot, by the way, is a duck-like bird found in Europe and North America. An “old coot,” according to the American Heritage Dictionary, is “an eccentric or crotchety person, especially an eccentric old man.” In other words, a codger and a curmudgeon combined.

Several readers have fond memories of the suicide knobs I mentioned as artifacts of a codger's youth. In ancient times, before power steering, a guy could steer his vehicle with one hand by making use of a rotating knob fastened to the wheel.

“Where I grew up — in Minnesota — we called the steering wheel knob a ‘necker knob,’” wrote David Noer. “You could keep your arm around your female companion and still steer.”

“We called them ‘Lovers’ knobs,’ because they eliminated the need to keep both hands on the steering wheel,” wrote John Barry, a native Bostonian who now calls himself a Tar Heel.

“I was thinking of suicide knobs just a bit ago and wondering when they were last available,” wrote Tom Netsel of Jamestown, N.C.

My recollection is that they faded into history during the 1960s, as power steering took over the work of guiding the car.

“Oh, by the way,” Tom added, “anyone who still has an AOL mail account might be a codger, too.”

Which certifies Tom and me both as codgers.

Readers may write Gene Owens at 104 Belspring Lane, Anderson SC 29621 or email him at WadesDixieco@AOL.com.