Re: Proposal: DNS change irc.gnome.org becomes A record and irc.gimpnet.org starts getting phased out.

[Bryen M Yunashko <suserocks bryen com>]

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