this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2023
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I want to take back 'Retard'. Because I want it to apply to things that are infuriatingly stupid, instead of it being used as a derogatory term towards special needs people.

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[–] fubo@lemmy.world 99 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Why not just call those things infuriating, bad, counterproductive, ruinous, negligent, futile, aggravating, or shitty?

"Retarded" originated as a medical euphemism for what is now sometimes called "developmental delay": some kid didn't learn to walk or talk or read or behave himself by the usual age. As a verb, "to retard" is "to slow down"; it's cognate to "tardy" meaning "late for class".

The original sense of "retarded" was about people with disabilities.

It was only used as a slang insult among schoolchildren because their teachers were using it as a medically descriptive term: "Be patient with Kevin; he's retarded."

The point of calling your friend Billy "a retard" as an insult was that you were comparing him to Kevin. The point of calling the school rules "retarded" was that you were comparing them to Kevin.

The whole reason that you think "retarded" can mean "infuriatingly stupid" is that Kevin flails and babbles because of his disability, and you're used to being infuriated by him instead of being patient with him like the teacher told you to.

You getting to use "retard" to mean something other than a disability insult is not "reclaiming" a slur. That's not what "reclaiming" means.

Reclaiming a slur is when the gay activist group calls itself Queer Nation, not when a straight person decides they want to say "queer" as a generic insult. It's when they say "Sure, you go ahead and call me 'queer' — because I'm going to use that as a good thing."

Reclaiming a slur is when we stopped saying "No, we're not nerds, stop calling us nerds, you mean jocks!" and started saying "Yes, we are nerds, nerd culture is awesome, you wish you were us."

[–] lagomorphlecture@lemm.ee 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You made me look up the etymology and NGL I always thought it must be from "en retard", late, for some reason. Like because if you're late you're delayed and "retarded people" have developmental delays or something. The real etymology kind of makes more sense though.

[–] fiat_lux@kbin.social 16 points 1 year ago

You're not wrong either, it does ultimately derive from Latin 'tardus' meaning 'late', it just took a slight detour in French.

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[–] ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world 62 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Inflammable should probably be reclaimed for public safety reasons.

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[–] Kikkertje@aussie.zone 48 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I would like triggered and ptsd back please. Both words have lost their meaning and as a person suffering from cptsd it's infuriating.

The same with OCD and depression. I honestly get the urge to kick people using phrases like "I am totally OCD about [something trivial and irrelevant]" or being "depressed" because it happens to be raining outside or some other banality. And don't get me started on "funny" merchandise like T-shirts with respective slogans printed on them, as if suffering from a mental illness was a fashion statement.

[–] wjrii@kbin.social 37 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Be careful. The word only took on its perjorative meaning because of the connection to various groups of special needs people. Before then, the noun form was pretty much nonexistent, and the adjective and verb forms were boring latinate terms meaning "slow(ed) down."

[–] karmiclychee@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 year ago

Not enough people consider the origin of these words, trying to use them divorced from the thing that actually makes it a pejorative. Growing up, "gay" was another one people tried to use as an insult "non-homophobically"

It's poisonous for a reason

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[–] exocortex@discuss.tchncs.de 30 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

"conservative"

Today people who self-identify as conservative are basically all assholes with a deep hatret towards dignity, humanity, society and nature. They're proud to be assholes, they're vice-signalling.

But the actual word - "conservative" - it has lost all meaning. What are they "conserving"? They're against environmentalism. I'd like to "conserve" nature so that future generations may still live on it. Am I now conservative? They want to burn everything down even the things they claim to uphold. They yell about freedom of speech and ban books at the same time. They shit on rules and all long-standing conventions, norms and just basic human tactfulness. What things are they "conserving"? The word has lost all meaning and means just bigoted loud asshole today.

[–] dannoffs@lemmy.sdf.org 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Conservatives "conserve" social hierarchy.

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[–] Nonameuser678@aussie.zone 29 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Look if you're not disabled or special needs you really don't have any right to reclaim this word in any sense. This is the equivalent of trying to reclaim the n word as a white person. It's just incredibly inappropriate and insensitive. Also, can I just say, your definition of repurposing this word is incredibly problematic because you're actually still just using it to mean the same thing it was originally intended to mean. And it's incredibly offensive, just so you know. So please don't use this word.

And frankly as a person with a cognitive disability, our community really isn't keen on repurposing the r word in any way so please don't think you can just jump in and do this without consulting the people it impacts. Even if we had repurposed this word, it's still offensive for non-disabled people to use it in the same way it's offensive for white people to use the n word.

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[–] someguy3@lemmy.world 24 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

Nimrod.

Meant a great hunter until Bugs Bunny used it sarcastically.

[–] niktemadur@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

According to an unreliable source - some 70s comic by the same guy who made the evangelical Chick tracts - Nimrod was an Oedipus-type figure that married his mother. So I always took Bugs use of "Nimrod" as a sly way to say "motherfucker".

[–] xigoi@lemmy.sdf.org 6 points 1 year ago

The programming language Nim was originally called Nimrod. The creator had to rename it after he found out that the word has this connotation.

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 4 points 1 year ago

Bugs Bunny is too powerful. Not only could his wordplay fool those on his world but he has redefined the meaning of the word Nimrod as well as making people believe carrots are associated with rabbits.

[–] Phantom_Engineer@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I dunno, the Biblical story around Nimrod doesn't paint him in a good light either.

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[–] dannoffs@lemmy.sdf.org 20 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I would like the word "woke" back.

[–] vd1n@lemmy.ml 21 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

So ridiculous... I never used the term but understood it basically meaning "mindfulness and accepting humanity".

Then pop politics took it, stuck their chodes in it, fucked it, dragged it through the streets and shot it in the head.

And now its basically a hate term for anyone that lives with respect towards humanity.

But don't get me wrong, I hated when people threw it around as conveniently as "lit" or some shit like that.

Now using the word woke basically means you're too dumb to understand life or your own existence, because it's only grumpy selfish assholes that use it.

[–] cooopsspace@infosec.pub 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Awake (woke) to human needs, human rights, how broken capitalism is and humanity's effect on the climate.

[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 year ago

No, no, the racists stole it from the black people fair and square, and you know they never give anything back to black people without first shitting on it.

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[–] Albbi@lemmy.ca 18 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Pineapple. Just use ananas like the rest of the world.

It's not from a pine tree and it's not an apple.

[–] MaxMouseOCX@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Way too close to bananas for my liking.

[–] kmkz_ninja@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Yeah, "Can you go to the store to grab anananas?" is going to get me to bring bananas home every time.

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[–] fsxylo@sh.itjust.works 13 points 1 year ago

"truth" should not mean whatever angry shit you saw on YouTube today.

[–] deaconblue@kbin.social 12 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Used to mean something else in the world of machinery and auto mechanics. Old school stuff. There is a screw that holds the distributor cap in place. A mechanic would loosen that screw and rotate the whole distributor cap very slightly, maybe 5° or so, the thing is round, so that's a really small portion of a circle. So one could turn it clockwise or counterclockwise to advance or retard the timing.

[–] eroc1990@lemmy.parastor.net 15 points 1 year ago

And that usage is still fine and actively used in those kinds of industries. But OP is just being edgy.

[–] CADmonkey@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I have a project car I'm working on, and the distributor timing was so far advanced that the engine would barely run, even when the adjustment was at full retard. I took the distributor out and re-installed it one gear tooth retarded, and now I can set the timing correctly.

I couldn't have told this story on reddit, my comment would have been removed.

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[–] rodneylives@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] nIi7WJVZwktT4Ze@fost.hu 5 points 1 year ago
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[–] flossdaily@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

When I was a communications director, I used the term "retards" as in the following sentence: "This type of legislation retards progress on several key initiatives."

My boss made me take it out because it might offend people.

Talk about the dumbing down of America...

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[–] negativeyoda@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Trump

Some dingus made using that word a lot less desirable

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[–] afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Closed.

A valve is closed if it doesn't allow water to travel through it. The circuit is closed if it allows electricity to travel through it. Some valves you have to close the circuit to close the valve, some valves you have to open the circuit to close the valve.

Can we just use closed only for circuits and make valves use a different word?

[–] peasinspace@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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[–] MooseBoys@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

I wish “nonce” still just meant something used “never more than once” e.g. a cryptographic nonce.

[–] flossdaily@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The whole thing is ridiculous. "Mental retardation" was a technical, medical term.

People started getting offended because it was being used as an insult. They didn't understand that no matter what you name this condition, people will use it as an insult.

That's what happened with the medical terms "idiot" and "imbecile" as well.

Even the term "special" got usurped. Remember when Obama slipped and made a joke about himself being in the Special Olympics?

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[–] troydowling@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Hack.

It doesn't mean someone guessed your Facebook dictionary-word password.

It doesn't even mean some black hoodie-wearing, bad actor remotely broke into a secure computer system.

It's a clever trick. Whether it's in code or concrete. Some creative, elegant, unexpected, solution to a problem.

"I know a menu hack. Order the kids burger and add cheese to save a buck."

"We ran out of conductors in the cable, so we're transmitting power via a differential pair. I know it's a hack, but we need to ship by end of month."

[–] anolemmi@lemmi.social 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I just hate that I can’t refer to a bundle of sticks properly anymore without being called a homophobe!

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