MaxxQ wrote: I realize it's a bit of a sensitive subject, but because of when and where I grew up, I've always used the term "handicapped". Now, I understand that people object to that term, and I understand the reasons, but to me, it sounds a lot less offensive than "crippled". "Disabled" is okay, to me, but I still tend to use handicapped. "Differently-abled" just sounds insulting.
I'm glad to see someone else got off the treadmill.
I have heard an alleged reason for why "handicapped" is supposed to be objectionable, but I am unmoved, particularly
because it's a damned lie.
I am offended by the notion that someone can fabricate another meaning for my words and insist that I am wrong to use those words because of that fabrication. It's fundamentally dishonest, and I will call it out whenever I see it done.
@cthia,
The word "possibilistic" seems to be a portmanteau of "possible" and "probabilistic", and therefore conveys a shade of meaning the root "possible" doesn't quite accomplish. I therefore offer no objection to it. In contrast, I bristle at the tendency to, for example, use the word "utilize" as a synonym for "use". Note that this is not an objection to the word "utilize" itself, only a plea that it only be used to convey a different meaning from the shorter "use".
Thinking back to the black/negro argument, I realized there was a related issue specific to the development of euphemisms in English. It is the bastard child of the Germanic and Romance families, having sprung from the Low German dialects of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, further influenced by the Vikings, rubbing up against the Latin of the Romano-Britons and the Norman French (derived from the Latin vulgate) of William the Conqueror and his noblemen. The American branch of English has had further close exposure to Latin-derived Spanish as well as French.
Because of this, for many ideas English has two completely different words; one with Germanic roots and one Latin. Because the ruling class preferred the Latin-derived French; and because Latin was the international language of scholarship due to the Roman Empire having imprinted itself upon all of Europe's cultures, the Latin-derived alternative is considered the "cultured" term, while the Germanic is "vulgar". The Latin "copulate" is clearly preferred to the Germanic four-letter alternative.
That we reached a point in history when the Latin-derived "negro" needed to be replaced with the Germanic "black" makes that a watershed moment in euphemisms. Perhaps Spanish loanwords have less cachet (heh) than those we've assimilated from French.
It might be interesting to see if the language of the commoners in the Andermani Empire includes Chinese expressions that are considered "vulgar". Perhaps some Marine non-com will get to throw out such an epithet when boarding a SLN vessel on a commerce-raiding mission to Silesia, and a higher-ranking officer will apologize for his subordinate's inappropriate language.
