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Never heard this before either. I googled "Tinker Slur" and Gemini said this: > The term "tinker" is a racial slur when used against Irish and Scottish Travel
by echelon 1y ago
Never heard this before either.
I googled "Tinker Slur" and Gemini said this:
> The term "tinker" is a racial slur when used against Irish and Scottish Travellers and Romani people. Originally derived from the name of an itinerant profession, the word evolved into a derogatory ethnic insult with connotations of being dirty, dishonest, and criminal.
Further sources:
https://hatebase.org/vocabulary/tinker https://hatebase.org/vocabulary/tinker
https://www.threads.com/@yourlocaltj/post/DCbY6wMIJ7J?hl=en https://www.threads.com/@yourlocaltj/post/DCbY6wMIJ7J?hl=en
TIL
Shame that people do this. It's been a salient word all my life, and it's a useful word too.
I'll keep calling myself a tinkerer.
- labrador 1y agoI'm an American of Irish and Scottish descent with some travellers in my background. Never heard this word as a slur, only as "I like to tinker with machines." Tinker as a slur hasn't travelled off the islands of Great Britain apparently. Edit: I'm not changing my usage of the word. I like to tinker.
- closewith 1y agoI suspect you're just not aware of how others consider the way you choose to speak: https://archive.is/WydpC https://archive.is/WydpC
- labrador 1y agoI'm very aware of how I speak which is why I have a good track record of not offending people. I change with the times e.g. I no longer refer to a car transmission as a tranny. So I know tinker as a slur is archaic. I've never heard anyone use it as a slur and think it would be counter productive to revive it as one.
- closewith 1y agoYou not hearing it doesn’t make it archaic. Tinker is still thrown at Travellers in Ireland, the UK, Australia, and elsewhere. Calling it “dead” just shows you your bubble, not reality.
- echelon 1y agoAuthored by William Safire [1], who also authored the "In Event of Moon Disaster" speech [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Safire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Safire [2] https://www.archives.gov/files/presidential-libraries/events/centennials/nixon/images/exhibit/rn100-6-1-2.pdf https://www.archives.gov/files/presidential-libraries/events...
- kgwgk 1y agoInteresting that you link to an article that has no issues with the word “tinker”.
- overscore 1y agoYes, it is, and 37 years later, it is no longer acceptable to use such terms.
- kgwgk 1y agoOn the contrary, it seems more acceptable now than 37 years ago - the “unacceptable” meaning that was already residual then (and not mentioned in the article at all!) is even more irrelevant today.
- closewith 1y agoSo you believe the slur is no longer used or something?
- kgwgk 1y agoI think it's used less than 37 years ago in that sense - and it was not much of an issue back then (at least in the US, that article doesn't mention that tinker could be considered offensive while it talks about 'wetbacks'). You believe the slur is used now more than 37 years ago or something?
- goopypoop 1y agoyour usage is fine there too. however, "the islands of Great Britain" is offensive to the Irish
- closewith 1y agoThe ethnic slur predates (and is the etymology of) the meaning you're familiar with.
- chuckadams 1y agoMeanings become obsolete. Calling someone "nice" used to mean they were stupid.
- gs17 1y agoDo you have a source for this? I can't find any etymology dictionary that says it doesn't come from either "tin" as in the metal or "tink" as an onomatopoeia (or a verb that refers to mending things). To be fair, they say it's uncertain, but you seem very confident about your alternative etymology.
- overscore 1y agoThe formation etymology (whether from tin or onomatopoeia) is uncertain. The part that is certain is the semantic chronology. The noun tinker was used from at least the 13th century for an itinerant mender of pots, the Travellers. By the 16th century it became a slur for Travellers. The verb to tinker doesn’t appear until the mid-17th century, first meaning to work as a tinker and only later coming to mean what you're familiar with. So while the root word’s sound-shape is debated, the order of senses is clear: the Traveller sense comes first, the modern “casual repair” sense comes later and was derived from it. This is the etymological order given in all sources, eg https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tinker https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tinker
- gs17 1y ago> eg https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tinker https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tinker Does this page show something different in your region? For me it doesn't say anything about what you're claiming it does outside of one "chiefly Ireland, sometimes offensive" definition. The etymology only says "Middle English tinkere", and the history explicitly states its first use as being the not-"chiefly Ireland, sometimes offensive" definition. The etymologies I was seeing show it going from "this is a word that describes a job" and branching to "this group of people does this job a lot, let's call them this word" and "fiddling with things to do anything is close enough". I'm genuinely interested in this, I work in what's a relatively "woke" domain (education) and I've never heard a complaint about something being called "tinkerable", even from colleagues in the UK.
- buildbot 1y agoInteresting, Robert Jordan basically directly lifts that term for the Romani-esque tinkers in Wheel of Time.