Mozilla Open Source Support: First Awards Made

Posted Dec 13, 2015 9:54 UTC (Sun) by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
In reply to: Mozilla Open Source Support: First Awards Made by drag
Parent article: Mozilla Open Source Support: First Awards Made

> Assigning malicious significance and meaning where their is none is the fault of the person being offended. To then make a big deal out of nothing is itself a cause of offense since it's assigning motives and maliciousness where there is none. This is demeaning and if taken very far is dehumanizing.

And where does it stop? IT DOESN'T. That's why I'm anti-PC - because it just goes on and on. Look at the history of words used to describe the humble latrine (or equivalent). I carefully used the word "latrine" because, to the best of knowledge, it doesn't have any prior ancestry. But pretty much every other word was initially used as a euphemism, then became *the* word, then was euphamised itself out of polite vocabulary. And it did nothing to solve the real problem (that we all need a pee).

I regularly use the example of race on Groklaw - I couldn't take part because my normal, acceptable, British vocabulary was offensive in PJ's living room. Her blog, her choice, but being PC blocked me out of the debate :-(

At the end of the day, we're all biased. We all discriminate. IT'S CALLED BEING HUMAN. And if we took Jesus' words to heart ("Take the log out of your own eye, before complaining about the mote in your neighbour's"), the world would be a much nicer place.

Cheers,
Wol

Mozilla Open Source Support: First Awards Made

Posted Dec 13, 2015 22:51 UTC (Sun) by roc (subscriber, #30627) [Link]

That phenomenon is often called the "euphemistic treadmill"; Wikipedia has a good article on it. It has probably always been part of language development --- even "shit" is believed to have originally been a euphemism. "PC" is different.

Mozilla Open Source Support: First Awards Made

Posted Dec 14, 2015 13:15 UTC (Mon) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

What vocabulary was that re race? Wasn't "black", was it?

Mozilla Open Source Support: First Awards Made

Posted Dec 14, 2015 22:37 UTC (Mon) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link] (2 responses)

> Look at the history of words used to describe the humble latrine (or equivalent). I carefully used the word "latrine" because, to the best of knowledge, it doesn't have any prior ancestry.

"Crapper" is the name of the man who invented the ball float mechanism[1], so that's where that one comes from.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Crapper

Mozilla Open Source Support: First Awards Made

Posted Dec 16, 2015 18:29 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (1 responses)

The OED disagrees with you (and the very Wikipedia page you link has a whole section devoted to the same).

Etymology of the already somewhat archaic/dialectical 'crapper' in the modern form: CRAP + -ER suffix, first recorded use 1932, long after Thomas Crapper died. 'Crap' itself is recorded in the 15th century (as chaff, dregs, weeds growing among corn), identical with a Dutch word, and is likely related to similar words in Old French.

Even the specific meaning relating to excrement has its first recorded use in the OED (as the noun 'crapping') in 1849, at which point Thomas Crapper was thirteen years old, and an unambiguous one in 1859, at which point Crapper had only recently started work and was relatively little known. His fame was decades away (and may well have been helped by his name being so apposite!)

Mozilla Open Source Support: First Awards Made

Posted Dec 16, 2015 18:44 UTC (Wed) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]

> His fame was decades away (and may well have been helped by his name being so apposite!)

The wikipedia entry says that his father was a Sailor but his brother a Plumber who Thomas apprenticed under, maybe crap jobs were in the family history at a time when job-based family names were taken, such that it's not entirely coincidence for him to have been involved in sanitation.