On Sat, 2013-05-11 at 08:10 -0400, Richard Stallman wrote: > Tristan, your analogy should have been based on a word whose > legitimate use did *not* precede its use as an epithet. > > According to Wiktionary, the word "gimp" has many meanings, one being > "a limping gait". That meaning, the one I learned long ago, is not > derogatory. > > I suspect that the derogatory meaning is rather new, but Wiktionary > does not have information about its age. >
For as long as I've known the word, since I was a little child in the 70's, it was uttered in a derogatory sense. Words don't just suddenly become derogatory. They evolve due to cultural usages that often predates when it "officially" becomes derogatory. The word "dubm" for example has an especially heinous and deorgatory connotation to it for the Deaf community. While I'd love to discuss the history of that word to enlighten how words become derogatory, I won't do it here in this thread. Anyone can ping me off-list if they're interested in a bit of history lesson there. :-) Bryen _______________________________________________ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
