Pedants' Paradise

[oddoneout]

From a Guardian consumer article

In London, Kennedy was alerted that his property had been put on Airbnb by neighbours.

Actually it was the tenant who had listed the property and the neighbours who alerted the owner.

[LMcD]

So will I!

Don't worry - the best is yet to come - I'm nine squared!

[Pulcinella]

So, we were both 'new Elizabethans'!

I must be that bit older......see my Profile.
The news of my birth reached Sandringham and the poor king snuffed it two hours later, so I'm technically a Georgian!

[smittims]

So, we were both 'new Elizabethans'!

[Pulcinella]

I'll be 73 next month, vinteuil. But rather than age I think it's to do with the way my brain is wired. I've never gone in for subtle hints and hidden meanings and mind games and standing back sniggering while someone tries to work out what they mean. As I've only a few years to go I think I'll just stick to plain English and risk being arrested for inadverently using a politically-incorrect word.

So will I!

[smittims]

I'll be 73 next month, vinteuil. But rather than age I think it's to do with the way my brain is wired. I've never gone in for subtle hints and hidden meanings and mind games and standing back sniggering while someone tries to work out what they mean. As I've only a few years to go I think I'll just stick to plain English and risk being arrested for inadverently using a politically-incorrect word.

[Old Grumpy]

As a verb it has a different history. The OED has the first British use (in single quotes) as a noun indicating contempt in the New Statesman, 1966: U.S. slang. (disparaging and offensive). A person from East or Southeast Asia; (more recently) spec. a Vietnamese person.

Thanks FF, helpful (as ever). I certainly heard the use as a verb (as in sloped off) from childhood.

I was too was unaware of the disparaging U.S. slang usage until the Clarkson debacle.

[french frank]

I can't remember when I first encountered the phrase 'slope off', but it must have been several decades ago.

As a verb it has a different history. The OED has the first British use (in single quotes) as a noun indicating contempt in the New Statesman, 1966: U.S. slang. (disparaging and offensive). A person from East or Southeast Asia; (more recently) spec. a Vietnamese person.

[LMcD]

Your mention of the word 'slope', ff, reminds me of how difficult it is for me, and I guess, others of my generation,to keep up with political correctness. You may find it difficult to believe, but until I read your post I wouldn't have thought 'slope' meant anything else but its traditional English meaning. I was told some time ago that one mustn't say 'water melon' as that has become an offensive term. What these two terms are now taken to mean is a mystery to me. Words and phrases that were acceptable last year are suddenly politically-incorrect. Its a minefield (oops, for all I now 'minefield' might now be banned for some reason).

This isn't mean to be satirical . I do genuinely find it all bewildering.

I can't remember when I first encountered the phrase 'slope off', but it must have been several decades ago.

[french frank]

Your mention of the word 'slope', ff, reminds me of how difficult it is for me, and I guess, others of my generation,to keep up with political correctness. You may find it difficult to believe, but until I read your post I wouldn't have thought 'slope' meant anything else but its traditional English meaning.

Well, in most contexts, smittims, it would be perflectly clear that you meant an incline of some sort. And it would be improbable, I think, for you to find a context where someone might reasonably expect that you'd used it of an Asian person. I didn't know the term either until I read the news story about Clarkson who, in Clarkson fashion, was using it in an ambiguous way and certainly did know what the term implied. That was the 'lighthearted joke', ho ho. I'm sure he was relying on the fact that few people would appreciate the allusion.

Certainly, if one takes little notice of current news stories you might not stay up-to-date. I can assure you, it would be perfectly acceptable linguistically to ask your greengrocer, if they didn't mind, to please cut you a slice of water melon. As long as he wasn't black and you stressed water melon in a knowing way and laughed, winking and nudge-nudging your loutish looking friend. Not that I'm suggesting you fraternise with loutish looking people.. (And M vinteuil is a few years my junior - if he doesn't mind my mentioning it.)

[vinteuil]

how difficult it is for me, and I guess, others of my generation,to keep up with political correctness / ... / I do genuinely find it all bewildering.

I am 72. Are you that much older than me?

.

[smittims]

Your mention of the word 'slope', ff, reminds me of how difficult it is for me, and I guess, others of my generation,to keep up with political correctness. You may find it difficult to believe, but until I read your post I wouldn't have thought 'slope' meant anything else but its traditional English meaning. I was told some time ago that one mustn't say 'water melon' as that has become an offensive term. What these two terms are now taken to mean is a mystery to me. Words and phrases that were acceptable last year are suddenly politically-incorrect. Its a minefield (oops, for all I now 'minefield' might now be banned for some reason).

This isn't mean to be satirical . I do genuinely find it all bewildering.

[vinteuil]

Adopting the insult as a 'badge of honour', on the other hand, is thumbing one's nose at the perpetrators - and well done too. With time the insulting sting will have been removed.

Yes : it is a question of taking control of the language - and goes back a long way : Methodists, Quakers; more recently the black community taking on the N word -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N.W.A

and similarly queer &c. One of the more recent is the disabled community adopting the term crip (cripple) as a term of celebration -

https://cripticarts.org/the-crip-monologues-2/

The important thing is that it is those communities reclaiming a word rather than having it thrown at them

[french frank]

When my daughter was an au pair in America 20 plus years ago she was appalled by the casual use of the term "retard" to describe the autistic toddler she was looking after, the more so as it was 'professionals' (speech therapists and the like) using it. They couldn't see why she was bothered. I imagine that has changed now.

Yes, and changed for the better. It's hard to see why 'retard', 'cretin', or 'educationally subnormal' - all implicitly, if unintentionally, demeaning - would ever be reclaimed as badges of pride. That's quite different from the 'N' word or the similarly racial 'P' word; or any slang term used in a derogatory or mocking way like Clarkson's 'innocent' use of the word 'slope'. It's not the word that's insulting: it's the use of the word; and once it's become generally accepted as a term of abuse, even if its use is not intended to offend, it's liable to offend and is therefore better avoided. Adopting the insult as a 'badge of honour', on the other hand, is thumbing one's nose at the perpetrators - and well done too. With time the insulting sting will have been removed.

[oddoneout]

Quite so. But I doubt if 'cretin' and 'incurable' will ever be reclaimed - both once accepted medical terms. As a 1950s Headmaster my father was used to terms such as 'educationally sub-normal' , which after all simply meant below normal on a scale . But by the 1980s it was seen as abusive.

When my daughter was an au pair in America 20 plus years ago she was appalled by the casual use of the term "retard" to describe the autistic toddler she was looking after, the more so as it was 'professionals' (speech therapists and the like) using it. They couldn't see why she was bothered. I imagine that has changed now.