On October 28, 2001, William Safire, wrote an interesting article in The New York Times.
Within a week of the terrorist attack, George W. Bush went to the Islamic Center in Washington and said, ''Women who cover their heads in this country must feel comfortable going outside their homes.'' In remarks to State Department employees on Oct. 4, President Bush spoke warmly of ''stories of Christian and Jewish women alike helping women of cover, Arab-American women, go shop because they're afraid to leave their home.''
At a televised news conference a week later, he reprised this ecumenical theme: ''In many cities when Christian and Jewish women learned that Muslim women, women of cover, were afraid of going out of their homes alone . . . they went shopping with them . . . an act that shows the world the true nature of America.'' He repeated that phrase, women of cover, calling ''such an outpouring of compassion . . . such a wonderful example.''
The cover is a veil that expresses Muslim piety. The hijab, meaning ''cover, curtain,'' can range from a floral kerchief that leaves the face exposed, to the niqab, abbaya or in Persian, chador, which covers the whole body except the face, to the burka, as worn in Afghanistan, which covers everything. ''To have good hijab'' is a general term meaning ''to be properly covered.'' Some Muslim women believe that the cover need not be worn outside the mosque. The linguistic question: in describing the wearers of the veil, is it women who cover, as the president first used it, or women of cover?
Sue Obeidi, at the Muslim Public Affairs Council, uses women who cover, women who wear the scarf and women who wear hijab. She is unfamiliar with women of cover, and I cannot find it on databases.
It's possible that the president coined the phrase; if so, it was on the analogy of women of color, a description adopted by many nonwhites. (Though colored people is dated and almost a slur, people of color is not in the least offensive.) The substitution of who with of in the cover category introduces a nice parallel to the woman of color phrase; we'll see if it takes.
The article ends with the phrase 'we'll see if it takes'.
Now, after more than ten years, what can a native speaker, living in the U.S., say about that expression 'women of cover'? Paraphrasing Mr Safire's words, did it take?
Google Search shows more than 18,000 hits for "women of cover", but for those who live outside of the U.S. that number says nothing at all but simply leads to this question.
Best Answer
"Women of cover" did not take. If "bush" and "bushism" are excluded from the internet search, results don't even amount to a hundred. Also, it appears to me that the prospects of it taking in the future are slim to none.
Women of cover, it seems, is a euphemism for widely used women who cover (+ their hair / head / themselves / etc.) fashioned after the widely accepted one, people of color, which in turn used to be a euphemism for "colored people." So, if people of color successfully entered the vernacular, why doesn't women of cover as well? Here's my take on it.
First, there's the fact that it looks like and smells like a euphemism, an expression used in place of one that may be found offensive or unpleasant. Euphemisms are created out of social need. That women of cover didn't take, evinces the lack of such need in the case of women who cover. (And I think we can all be glad for that.)
Secondly, even if there had been the need for such a euphemism, the syntagmatic strength of this particular one, women of cover, is so low that it could never really have harbored the expectations of succeeding. A glance at the American corpus helps to understand the underlying logic of the construction [noun denoting a person or persons] + of + [[+intensifier] noun]. For example,
"people of" is followed the most by these nouns (geographical terms excluded):
"man of":
"man of many":
All those nouns have something in common. They all speak either of personality traits (of merit or of demerit) or personal achievement, or of something less individual but positive (e.g. means). Also, in all of these cases, the preposition of can be replaced with have/has, has been to, has seen and such. Of cover, simply, doesn't fit the formula. That's why it sounds artificial. On the other hand, color does fit, because aside from being a physical property, it happens to have an ulterior, positive metaphorical reading (as opposed to pale blandness or black wickedness). On that note, cover too has a metaphorical reading: that of subordinance or even cowardice ("taking cover"). Another point: whenever someone speaks of values, they are referring to a value system, which means that they are familiar with that value system. That, in turn, connotes not only their knowledge of that system, but also their partaking in it. By saying that someone is of action sends a hidden message that the speaker himself values action, and by extension, might personally be or intends to be of action. Even if that happens to be obviously untrue, the message has been sent. By saying something negative about someone, the speaker avows he personally is not like that. Of cover fails miserably in this avenue as well.
These are only a few reasons why it didn't take, and why it's unlikely to. I'm sure more can be surmised.
Edit: It looks like this phrase is more than just neutrally scarce. Some actually have a problem with it: