I think about offensive synonyms the same way I think about offensive statues. So go build your own. Don't tear down what others have. You will find that it is much harder to build things than to break them.
BTW, Tolkien worked on the "W's" more than anything else: Walrus and walnut are known for certain to be his and he did well, as they have not been revised in the hundred years since he did them. Whale-horse (OE hross) and "foreign-nut" for those who are interested. wal* meaning "foreign" is found in our word for the people of Wales - and "Wallace," that most Scottish of names means "the Welshman" - as well as the Vlachs or Wallachians in Romania, The Walloons, Cornwall, and the Gauls elsewhere in Europe. Just a way of saying "foreigner" in many Indo-European languages. Everyone used it about someone else, and sometimes the name stuck.
I looked at her with that sign and just blinked a few times. That was a poor choice.
ReplyDelete“My girlfriends don’t speak like this so it’s a man’s point of view....”
ReplyDeleteSo, maybe she could suggest synonyms from a woman's point of view, instead of trying to take words away.
Nah.
Eric Hines
“...that sign...”
ReplyDeleteYou’d think that lesson would have been learned.
https://youtu.be/44mqiBrB0zI
I think about offensive synonyms the same way I think about offensive statues. So go build your own. Don't tear down what others have. You will find that it is much harder to build things than to break them.
ReplyDeleteBTW, Tolkien worked on the "W's" more than anything else: Walrus and walnut are known for certain to be his and he did well, as they have not been revised in the hundred years since he did them. Whale-horse (OE hross) and "foreign-nut" for those who are interested. wal* meaning "foreign" is found in our word for the people of Wales - and "Wallace," that most Scottish of names means "the Welshman" - as well as the Vlachs or Wallachians in Romania, The Walloons, Cornwall, and the Gauls elsewhere in Europe. Just a way of saying "foreigner" in many Indo-European languages. Everyone used it about someone else, and sometimes the name stuck.
ReplyDelete*Proto-Germanic - walhaz
"Our dictionaries strive to reflect, rather than dictate, how language is used."
ReplyDeleteWhich is the exact opposite of the aim of the petitioner, another person for whom 1984 is an instruction manual.