4 ms·

At some point, maybe you decide that life is too short and you change the name. Cities have been renamed before. In addition, even if a word is itself inoffensi

At some point, maybe you decide that life is too short and you change the name. Cities have been renamed before. In addition, even if a word is itself inoffensive, if it is close to an offensive word, it can be a problem. There is a word that starts with “n” that means stingy, but because it is close to another word that is a horrible racial slur, you would be a fool to use it, even though it has a different meaning.

EggsAndOil 4y ago
The word is niggardly. It is offensive to nobody. "Outrage culture" isn't healthy. Please stop promoting it.
- wongarsu 4y ago
  You know it's bad if there's a whole wikipedia article about the controversy about a word https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word_niggardly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word_n...
  - teddyh 4y ago
    No smoke without a fire?
    - detuur 4y ago
      There's plenty of fireless smoke generators.
      - Vecr 4y ago
        Kind of? Is it really smoke without a fire at some point though, or just a "smoke like aerosol suspension"?
blueflow 4y ago
I'm not feeling like i want to bend my vocabulary to work around people who get offended by every second word regardless of its intent.
alkonaut 4y ago
The problem isn't that a city is called asshole-opon-tyne which would be worth changing. It's "Scunthorpe". You can't rename everything that happens to have a subset of the letters in a long word form any of 100 short "offensive" words like ass, butt or cunt. Even when censoring it could make it even worse, most famously the game that censored the player Nasser into N***er. That shows another part of the problem: the list of offensive words must be multiplied by the number of languages in existence and the number of input terms that risk matching as well.
pdpi 4y ago
The problem isn't Scunthorpe specifically. That particular problem is just one case of a broader problem. Should we also rename the whole Parus and * Sula* genera (the tits and boobies, respectively)? Should we stop referring to female dogs as bitches? Should geologists come up with new names for marshite, brushite, or mackintoshite (the jokes write themselves about that last one)? What about cockshead (the herb) and Cockshead (the town)?

EggsAndOil 4y ago

The word is niggardly. It is offensive to nobody. "Outrage culture" isn't healthy. Please stop promoting it.

wongarsu 4y ago
You know it's bad if there's a whole wikipedia article about the controversy about a word https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word_niggardly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word_n...
- teddyh 4y ago
  No smoke without a fire?
  - detuur 4y ago
    There's plenty of fireless smoke generators.
    - Vecr 4y ago
      Kind of? Is it really smoke without a fire at some point though, or just a "smoke like aerosol suspension"?

blueflow 4y ago

I'm not feeling like i want to bend my vocabulary to work around people who get offended by every second word regardless of its intent.

alkonaut 4y ago

The problem isn't that a city is called asshole-opon-tyne which would be worth changing. It's "Scunthorpe". You can't rename everything that happens to have a subset of the letters in a long word form any of 100 short "offensive" words like ass, butt or cunt. Even when censoring it could make it even worse, most famously the game that censored the player Nasser into N***er. That shows another part of the problem: the list of offensive words must be multiplied by the number of languages in existence and the number of input terms that risk matching as well.

pdpi 4y ago

The problem isn't Scunthorpe specifically. That particular problem is just one case of a broader problem. Should we also rename the whole Parus and * Sula* genera (the tits and boobies, respectively)? Should we stop referring to female dogs as bitches? Should geologists come up with new names for marshite, brushite, or mackintoshite (the jokes write themselves about that last one)? What about cockshead (the herb) and Cockshead (the town)?