Ask Lemmy

Why not just call those things infuriating, bad, counterproductive, ruinous, negligent, futile, aggravating, or shitty?

"Retarded" originated as a medical euphemism for what is now sometimes called "developmental delay": some kid didn't learn to walk or talk or read or behave himself by the usual age. As a verb, "to retard" is "to slow down"; it's cognate to "tardy" meaning "late for class".

The original sense of "retarded" was about people with disabilities.

It was only used as a slang insult among schoolchildren because their teachers were using it as a medically descriptive term: "Be patient with Kevin; he's retarded."

The point of calling your friend Billy "a retard" as an insult was that you were comparing him to Kevin. The point of calling the school rules "retarded" was that you were comparing them to Kevin.

The whole reason that you think "retarded" can mean "infuriatingly stupid" is that Kevin flails and babbles because of his disability, and you're used to being infuriated by him instead of being patient with him like the teacher told you to.

You getting to use "retard" to mean something other than a disability insult is not "reclaiming" a slur. That's not what "reclaiming" means.

Reclaiming a slur is when the gay activist group calls itself Queer Nation, not when a straight person decides they want to say "queer" as a generic insult. It's when they say "Sure, you go ahead and call me 'queer' — because I'm going to use that as a good thing."

Reclaiming a slur is when we stopped saying "No, we're not nerds, stop calling us nerds, you mean jocks!" and started saying "Yes, we are nerds, nerd culture is awesome, you wish you were us."

Inflammable should probably be reclaimed for public safety reasons.

I would like triggered and ptsd back please. Both words have lost their meaning and as a person suffering from cptsd it's infuriating.

Be careful. The word only took on its perjorative meaning because of the connection to various groups of special needs people. Before then, the noun form was pretty much nonexistent, and the adjective and verb forms were boring latinate terms meaning "slow(ed) down."

"conservative"

Today people who self-identify as conservative are basically all assholes with a deep hatret towards dignity, humanity, society and nature. They're proud to be assholes, they're vice-signalling.

But the actual word - "conservative" - it has lost all meaning. What are they "conserving"? They're against environmentalism. I'd like to "conserve" nature so that future generations may still live on it. Am I now conservative? They want to burn everything down even the things they claim to uphold. They yell about freedom of speech and ban books at the same time. They shit on rules and all long-standing conventions, norms and just basic human tactfulness. What things are they "conserving"? The word has lost all meaning and means just bigoted loud asshole today.

Look if you're not disabled or special needs you really don't have any right to reclaim this word in any sense. This is the equivalent of trying to reclaim the n word as a white person. It's just incredibly inappropriate and insensitive. Also, can I just say, your definition of repurposing this word is incredibly problematic because you're actually still just using it to mean the same thing it was originally intended to mean. And it's incredibly offensive, just so you know. So please don't use this word.

And frankly as a person with a cognitive disability, our community really isn't keen on repurposing the r word in any way so please don't think you can just jump in and do this without consulting the people it impacts. Even if we had repurposed this word, it's still offensive for non-disabled people to use it in the same way it's offensive for white people to use the n word.

Nimrod.

Meant a great hunter until Bugs Bunny used it sarcastically.

I would like the word "woke" back.

Pineapple. Just use ananas like the rest of the world.

It's not from a pine tree and it's not an apple.

"truth" should not mean whatever angry shit you saw on YouTube today.

Used to mean something else in the world of machinery and auto mechanics. Old school stuff. There is a screw that holds the distributor cap in place. A mechanic would loosen that screw and rotate the whole distributor cap very slightly, maybe 5° or so, the thing is round, so that's a really small portion of a circle. So one could turn it clockwise or counterclockwise to advance or retard the timing.

Gay.... I'm old enough to remember when it just meant happy..... We even had to change a friend's nickname when the usage changed .. His name is Ben, and we called him Bengay at first (like the muscle rub) which shortened to Gay... We would literally refer to him as Gay and call him that in public with no problem... Then things changed and we couldn't call him that anymore. I'd like Gay back

Roguelike.

I would like to reclaim the word pariah, erase it's existence and swap it with pariyah (pronounced purr-E-yeah), the plural form of pari (purr-E), meaning angels.

Pariah comes from the word Paraiyar (drummers). Paraiyar are a lower caste group from Tamil Nadu, a southern state in India, whose job revolved around drumming and witchcraft.

As if weaponization of this word from a caste to a slur wasn't enough, the colonialist repurposed it, and made it international.

I can't even imagine being a Paraiyar folks, and having to hear this word everyday.

If it helps, remove the word pariah from your vocabulary.

When I was a communications director, I used the term "retards" as in the following sentence: "This type of legislation retards progress on several key initiatives."

My boss made me take it out because it might offend people.

Talk about the dumbing down of America...

Trump

Some dingus made using that word a lot less desirable

I wish “nonce” still just meant something used “never more than once” e.g. a cryptographic nonce.

Closed.

A valve is closed if it doesn't allow water to travel through it. The circuit is closed if it allows electricity to travel through it. Some valves you have to close the circuit to close the valve, some valves you have to open the circuit to close the valve.

Can we just use closed only for circuits and make valves use a different word?

I just hate that I can’t refer to a bundle of sticks properly anymore without being called a homophobe!

The whole thing is ridiculous. "Mental retardation" was a technical, medical term.

People started getting offended because it was being used as an insult. They didn't understand that no matter what you name this condition, people will use it as an insult.

That's what happened with the medical terms "idiot" and "imbecile" as well.

Even the term "special" got usurped. Remember when Obama slipped and made a joke about himself being in the Special Olympics?

Hack.

It doesn't mean someone guessed your Facebook dictionary-word password.

It doesn't even mean some black hoodie-wearing, bad actor remotely broke into a secure computer system.

It's a clever trick. Whether it's in code or concrete. Some creative, elegant, unexpected, solution to a problem.

"I know a menu hack. Order the kids burger and add cheese to save a buck."

"We ran out of conductors in the cable, so we're transmitting power via a differential pair. I know it's a hack, but we need to ship by end of month."