Stripping Words

The Oxford English Dictionary, compiled in part by Tolkien, is asked to strip out offensive words. Offensive to whom? Guess.

6 comments:

Assistant Village Idiot said...

I looked at her with that sign and just blinked a few times. That was a poor choice.

E Hines said...

“My girlfriends don’t speak like this so it’s a man’s point of view....”

So, maybe she could suggest synonyms from a woman's point of view, instead of trying to take words away.

Nah.

Eric Hines

Grim said...

“...that sign...”

You’d think that lesson would have been learned.

https://youtu.be/44mqiBrB0zI

Assistant Village Idiot said...

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.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

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.

*Proto-Germanic - walhaz

RonF said...

"Our dictionaries strive to reflect, rather than dictate, how language is used."

Which is the exact opposite of the aim of the petitioner, another person for whom 1984 is an instruction manual.