Language, proper and improper

MACKTEXAS said:
This has mostly been a discussion of negative words but I'm just throwing this in for another angle: I don't really care for the current use of the word awesome. If someone makes a statement that's just a step above ordinary, often someone replies with, "Wow, that's Awesome!"
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I agree. Niagara Falls is awesome. A hydrogen bomb detonation is awesome.
Making a 10-foot putt is not awesome...:rolleyes:
 

Let alone saying you're going to the beach next weekend, or telling the server in the restaurant what you want to order.

I do think the very irritating constant use of the word "awesome" is lightening up a bit. At least, I haven't heard it quite so much lately. And that is truly an awesome development.
 
DebraMae said:
Woke had an entirely different meaning, a positive one. Someone somewhere decided to use it as slang for something entirely derogatory.

When I grew up the word "queer" was derogatory. Now it is considered just a category and deemed OK.
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Yes, it was considered very derogatory in years past, but when one decides to own something it no longer becomes hurtful. I'm sure that's why today's gay youth call themselves "queer". I was shocked when it was first added to LGBTQ because I was called "queer" in junior high and it still has a negative connotation for me. But good for them.
 

Elsie said:
In my city, the logo for a Dairy company is a prettied-up human-like face of a cow named Elsie. One time a little girl asked my mother if she was Elsie the cow's mother. :rolleyes::LOL:
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My father worked in sales for Borden Diary when I was a kid and Elsie the Cow was a part of their logo even back then. I know of what you speak. You probably feel like I feel when I see Limu Emu and DOUG. :ROFLMAO: I was also called Doogie Houser even when I was in my 30s!
 
MoBeans said:
On Martha's Vineyard there was a town called Gay Head. The area was first referred to as that by English settlers in the 1600s. This name was descriptive, referring to the "gaily multi-colored cliffs" seen from the sea.

One of the earliest known published uses referring to a homosexual relationship is in Gertrude Stein's story "Miss Furr & Miss Skeene" (1922), which subtly uses the word "gay" with a sexual intent . In 1998 they changed towns name from Gay Head to it's original Wampanoag indian name, Aquinnah. I am surprised it took them that long.
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I used to work with a lady called Gay.
She would be in late 70's now.. not uncommon name for girls in that era
I guess like Joy is also a name.

Anyway she said she had to be careful how she introduced herself to people: saying ' Hello, I'm gay ' gave wrong idea :ROFLMAO: :love:
 
Life would be so much simpler, if a new word was invented to describe something, rather than hijack one.
It's not hard to offend someone when you use everyday words that you were brought up with.
I used to wear colorful rainbow suspenders on my washup pants at work until the younger generation started picking on me about it. I didn't know that the rainbow was hijacked either.
 
MACKTEXAS said:
And language keeps evolving. Long ago the word "hussy" meant "housewife," or keeper of the house, but in today's world in conjures up thoughts of a cheap tramp.
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Interesting - my GM, whose colloquialisms remained firmly rooted in the early 1900s, used this word in the negative sense so your post started me wondering about it. According to a 1908 article in Good Housekeeping, hussy took on this negative meaning around 1600.

“Hussy” first took on this pejorative sense in the 1600s, when it came to mean a disreputable woman.

"The OED’s (Oxford English Dictionary's) earliest negative example is from the writings of the English clergyman and theologian John Trapp (1647): “Such another hussy as this was dame Alice Pierce, a concubine to our Edward III.”

p.s. When my sister and would go out in the evenings during our teens, GM often cautioned us against becoming hussies or trollops. This from a woman who fully embraced speakeasies and the flapper lifestyle during her own youth!
 
StarSong said:
Interesting - my GM, whose colloquialisms remained firmly rooted in the early 1900s, used this word in the negative sense so your post started me wondering about it. According to a 1908 article in Good Housekeeping, hussy took on this negative meaning around 1600.

“Hussy” first took on this pejorative sense in the 1600s, when it came to mean a disreputable woman.

"The OED’s (Oxford English Dictionary's) earliest negative example is from the writings of the English clergyman and theologian John Trapp (1647): “Such another hussy as this was dame Alice Pierce, a concubine to our Edward III.”

p.s. When my sister and would go out in the evenings during our teens, GM often cautioned us against becoming hussies or trollops. This from a woman who fully embraced speakeasies and the flapper lifestyle during her own youth!
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Thanks for this - I didn't know that much history about it.
 
As the OP, I agree with you, Pepper. I have no intention of "instructing" anyone what to say. This topic was inspired by another thread about the ubiquitousness of the "F" word. It made me think about how language changes. Bob Dylan summed it up very well in the song "The Times They Are A-Changin'."

Language certainly does change, all the time. Just listening to a conversation between two young people (teens, early twenties) is like listening to a foreign language. So claiming that a particular word or phrase is improper is pretty much meaningless.

I did suggest that we avoid letting this topic degenerate into an argument about whether the "F" word is emblematic of social decay, as the writer claimed. I was introducing (and you guys came through beautifully) a discussion about language in general, and how some words have changed in their ability to shock. This applies to many words, probably hundreds of them!
 
I've always used the word underpants. You know what? I still do. When I worked at a high school a lot of the male students would wear their jeans mid-butt level or even a little below. Every time they'd walk into the office I'd say, "Pull up your pants. I don't want to see your underpants." Boom. They'd pull them right up. Some of them would run across the street and their pants would actually fall down until they caught them at their knees. I'd laugh to myself but was that supposed to be a turn on for the female (or male) students? Maybe a gang thing? I don't know.

Anyways there are movies out there which seems every other line has the word F&@k in it and what's terribly wrong is young black folk call each other ******s in our area. What the hell? Why disrespect yourself and others when indeed their very own family may have been slaves in the past?

I don't get it.
 
Paulina said:
I've always used the word underpants. You know what? I still do. When I worked at a high school a lot of the male students would wear their jeans mid-butt level or even a little below. Every time they'd walk into the office I'd say, "Pull up your pants. I don't want to see your underpants." Boom. They'd pull them right up. Some of them would run across the street and their pants would actually fall down until they caught them at their knees. I'd laugh to myself but was that supposed to be a turn on for the female (or male) students? Maybe a gang thing? I don't know.

Anyways there are movies out there which seems every other line has the word F&@k in it and what's terribly wrong is young black folk call each other ******s in our area. What the hell? Why disrespect yourself and others when indeed their very own family may have been slaves in the past?

I don't get it.
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I really like this site. The system corrects my wrong verbiage. Good thing as the main one I posted was completely improper to say the least. LOLOLOLOL
 
Paulina said:
and what's terribly wrong is young black folk call each other ******s in our area. What the hell? Why disrespect yourself and others when indeed their very own family may have been slaves in the past?

I don't get it.
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I don't fully understand it either - but would be along the lines that seadoug mentioned earlier about reclaiming words so they are no longer insulting - as he mentioned with the word queer
 
January said:
I don't fully understand it either - but would be along the lines that seadoug mentioned earlier about reclaiming words so they are no longer insulting - as he mentioned with the word queer
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"My little horse must think it queer to stop without a farmhouse near"...
 
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