General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: On the evolution of language and the "W" word [View all]nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)will be seen more and more often, which is the point I made in the OP.
It will be attached to politicians of all parties, not just one, both male and female.
In 2010 it was a scandal when it was first used in this way by a high level politician. In the last 5 years it's gone form OH MY GOD he did not call Fiorina that! (Governor Brown in California did, and got some fire support as it were, as I pointed out in the OP), to ok... next. The term has become normalized among the political and talking head classes. I will not be too shocked to hear it on MSNBC one of these days. It's been used in Fox and CNN as well. The NYT has used it in quotes.
The other term that has become that way is media (magical word here). Hell, there is a site that uses that in their domain name.
So trying to stop this particular use is imho a losing battle.
Don't worry, I try to avoid serious discussions on this site. This thread is exhibit A. I constantly self censor myself on this site. Again, this thread is exhibit A. This has been the first serious attempt at an actual discussion in a while, likely the last for a good while. It's a time sink.
Not being able to discuss these changes in a mature adult way is very dangerous. Hell, it is damaging to whatever remains of our democracy.
It is part of the hyper partisanship that has overtaken this country. Language is a powerful tool to control. The Rs get the lion's share of it, but dems are not innocent. And if we are to have fruitful discussions and to move away from this, well self censorship needs to stop.
This site used to be known in the internets for vibrant, even muscular political discussion. That stopped a while ago. It is because of the self censorship among other issues.
This was alerted on, because apparently, a surprise to me, I was talking about HRC, when I was not I expected the alert well before I hit send becuase of the use of a magical word. We go back to self censorship and lack of an ability to discuss things.
This word by the way spit about 7,000 years ago... between it's good and bad definitions. It is one of the oldest words in Indo-European languages. It is not going away anytime soon. Anything that takes away the magic and it's power to insult is a good thing to me. And this shift, at least to me, is doing that.
Will it still be used in it's old meanings? You betcha. Words, do not lose older definitions that easily. This one has had it's ties to prostitution going back to at least Latin, not even lower Latin. That be the Roman Empire. Language evolution is kind of an interest of mine. I find it fascinating.