csprince wrote:Badsnookerplayer wrote:csprince wrote:Badsnookerplayer wrote:csprince wrote:
not a cool word bsp.
Why??
flid spastic etc not cool just my opinion.
Spastic obviously.
Flid just means an fool no?
flid also means spastic.
Words also change their meanings over time and in many cases have multiple meanings either as a result or due to coincidence.
And word-policing is nothing new, its a subject as old as the hills.
Take the word 'heck' for example.
Heck was an invented word created because, during a time of religious fanaticism, the phrase "What the Hell?" was the worst kind of word you could use. A blaspheme of the highest order. So people just said "what the heck?" instead.
Ironically, "What the heck" is now viewed by some as a more serious 'naughty word' than "What the Hell?", because people associate the word Heck with circumventing stupid word-laws but have no clue at all that using Hell in that way was criminally anti-religious.
I mean, the modern example of that phrase is "What the-Fuck?", but because different places have different levels of taste regarding that phrase, due to the F word, it's now just commonly written as WTF, and everyone can read the F word in their head without anyone, oh the horror, the horror, actually saying-fuck.
And, of course, the F word doesn't even mean Heck or Hell, it means sex. To have sex. Just one of the millions of words we can use to express fornication, making love, boning, having a quickie, etc, but for some reason, most likely due to suppression of the Anglo-saxon tongue in England during an historical period, the F word got taken exception to.
So when someone says WTF, there's no sexual connotation in the phrase at all. Ironically, it's a derivation of religious blasphemy. We say WTF because at one time some idiots not very wise person who thought they were really wise, decided to ban the use of the phrase "what the Hell".
And if you want to get really pedantic about all the words that relate to referring to other people as 'not of great intelligence' or 'not very physically competent at completing their current physical task', then pretty much all of those words have their origins in a medical definition.
Dumb meant someone who was physically incapable of speaking. Another word for mute. An idiot was someone who:
Psychology. (no longer in technical use; considered offensive) a person of the lowest order in a former and discarded classification of mental retardation, having a mental age of less than three years old and an intelligence quotient under 25.
And yet both dumb and idiot are considered such tame words that no-one bats an eyelid to their use. Again, see the dictionary definition:
Dumb, dated, offensive (of a person) unable to speak, most typically because of congenital deafness.
"he was born deaf, dumb, and blind".
Even the word stupid:
Stupidity is a quality or state of being stupid, or an act or idea that exhibits properties of being stupid. In a character study of "The Stupid Man" attributed to the Greek philosopher Theophrastus (c. 371 – c. 287 BC), stupidity was defined as "mental slowness in speech or action".
Which, obviously, got used a lot when referring to people with medical abnormalities.
And then the word abnormal itself can be construed as an offensive term, because what is or isn't normal is a subjective stance of opinion. It's not abnormal to be born differently, it's just a normality that occurs in a minority of cases.
There are a gazillion words and phrases that have come to be used in situations where we just want to say "that person was less than proficient", and all of them are inherently offensive, but the language has always required such words and phrases.
To take exception to one over another is akin to grammar pedantry at best and akin to religious fanaticism at its worst. It prevents easy communication and expression while at the same time disrupting the language into ever more complex cul-de-sacs of confusion and double meaning as people simply rush to use another word to express the same natural expression.
I bet if he'd written his post entirely in Latin, for example, it would have been impossible for him to have made any 'offensive' use of language!
Anyway, this is all very off topic to this otherwise gay and spunky thread.
by Juddernaut88 » 30 Nov 2020 Read
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