I can’t believe I wasn’t hearing it, but maybe that was because of where I grew up, where we might say someone was slow or backwards (not meaning to offend) rather than use intellectual disability, which is quite a formal term. I thought the R one was a recent Americanism (like so much today, bah humbug).
I only quite recently learned that the word cripple is considered offensive. A lot of these words seem respectable to me somehow, but I suppose many of them started out that way and only became offensive due to how they were used as insults. Like moron, idiot etc were originally medical categories. I’ll have a look at the list, thanks. I’m sure there will some surprises for me.
I can’t believe I wasn’t hearing it, but maybe that was because of where I grew up, where we might say someone was slow or backwards (not meaning to offend) rather than use intellectual disability, which is quite a formal term. I thought the R one was a recent Americanism (like so much today, bah humbug).
I only quite recently learned that the word cripple is considered offensive. A lot of these words seem respectable to me somehow, but I suppose many of them started out that way and only became offensive due to how they were used as insults. Like moron, idiot etc were originally medical categories. I’ll have a look at the list, thanks. I’m sure there will some surprises for me.