{"id":7744,"date":"2005-08-23T22:57:32","date_gmt":"2005-08-24T05:57:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2005\/08\/23\/word-3.html"},"modified":"2005-08-23T22:57:32","modified_gmt":"2005-08-24T05:57:32","slug":"word_3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/08\/23\/word_3.html","title":{"rendered":"Word"},"content":{"rendered":"

When an Arab-American group discovered that Roget’s online thesaurus<\/a> included, as a synonym for “Arab,” various terms such as “beggar and “bum,” they contemplated how the Imperialist past had led writers like Kipling to introduce such connections into English, and vowed to make sure that they, themselves, did not contribute derogatory slang to the language.<\/p>\n

Well, no, of course not. They complained. They called the press. They cried racism.<\/p>\n

And, in the face of this, Roget’s did the reasonable thing. They noted that they were only describing the language as used, even if they found it, personally, deplorable, and while they would label it as derogatory, they couldn’t edit the English language to appease an interest group.<\/p>\n

Well, no, of course not. They folded. They struck the entries from their online thesaurus<\/a>. In fact, they removed all synonyms for Arab.<\/p>\n

Barbara Ann Kipfer, editor of the third edition of Roget’s 21st Century Thesaurus, said the entry had likely been on the site for years, but never made it into printed versions of the thesaurus.<\/p>\n

“We’re simply going to take it out,” she said on Monday. “The last thing you want with a thesaurus is to offend anyone.”<\/p>\n

Right. That’s the very last thing you want in a thesaurus. A thesaurus’s job, after all, is to make everyone feel happy and good about themselves.<\/p>\n

Assaf said he was satisfied that the listing had been removed. ”We look forward to working with them, should they need a proper definition of the word. The easier definition is ‘anyone who is Arabic,’ which would have been more than sufficient” he said.<\/p>\n

Nice work when you can define words for the thesaurus that way. Winston Smith would be proud.<\/p>\n

(via ypsidixit<\/a>)<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When an Arab-American group discovered that Roget’s online thesaurus included, as a synonym for “Arab,” various terms such as “beggar and “bum,” they contemplated how the Imperialist past had led…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-zt-pc"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":15185,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2009\/07\/12\/four-hundred-dollars-huh.html","url_meta":{"origin":7744,"position":0},"title":"Four hundred dollars, huh?","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 12-Jul-09 9:51pm","format":false,"excerpt":"The Oxford English Thesaurus? More properly, The Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary. \u00b7 The largest thesaurus resource in the world, covering more than 920,000 words and meanings based on the Oxford English Dictionary \u00b7 The very first historical thesaurus to be compiled for any of the world's languages\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Writing and Language"","block_context":{"text":"Writing and Language","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/writing-and-language"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":33723,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/13\/the-geography-of-hate.html","url_meta":{"origin":7744,"position":1},"title":"The Geography of Hate","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 13-May-13 3:19pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Interesting (if depressing) study of the derogatory use of certain terms on Twitter -- hand curated so that positive uses of the terms (racial, gender orientation, etc.) \u00a0could be excluded. View this post on Google+","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1019,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2001\/10\/24\/mellow_yellow.html","url_meta":{"origin":7744,"position":2},"title":"Mellow Yellow","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 24-Oct-01 5:15pm","format":false,"excerpt":"The cottonwoods in the backyard are all bright yellow in their foliage. In the afternoon sun, it illuminates the entire back of the house with a warm, yellow glow. Yellow,...","rel":"","context":"In "Personal"","block_context":{"text":"Personal","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/personal"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":28572,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/07\/13\/if-you-cant-say-something-nice-dont-link-to-us-at-all.html","url_meta":{"origin":7744,"position":3},"title":"If you can't say something nice, don't link to us at all","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 13-Jul-12 10:47pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Dear Official London 2012 Website:Notwithstanding your Terms of Use of the site, specifically item 5(a) \"Linking Policy,\" your requirement that nobody is allowed to link to your site in a way that \"shall portray us or any other official London 2012 organisations (or our or their activities, products or services)\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":128325,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/10\/15\/how-mcdonalds-changed-the-english-language.html","url_meta":{"origin":7744,"position":4},"title":"How McDonald's changed the English language","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 15-Oct-15 9:18pm","format":false,"excerpt":"According to this article ...http:\/\/logophilius.blogspot.com\/2015\/10\/how-mcdonalds-marketing-made-us-grimace.html... until the early\/mid-1970s, \"grimace\" was pronounced \"grih-MAYS\" (rhymes with \"face\"). But when McDonald's introduced \"The Evil Grimace\" to their McDonaldLand commercials, they chose to pronounce it \"GRIM-miss\" -- which pronunciation stuck (probably given the fact that it's not a word that's spoken aloud very often).[http:\/\/mcdonalds.wikia.com\/wiki\/Grimace]And,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":135247,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/11\/01\/evolution-language-lot-complex-even-linguists-thought.html","url_meta":{"origin":7744,"position":5},"title":"The evolution of language is a lot more complex that even linguists have thought","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 1-Nov-17 2:32pm","format":false,"excerpt":"The growing use of massive corpus databases to examine how language evolves over time is providing some very cool looks at that complexity -- and demonstrating, once again, that language is always evolving, despite people's attempts to set Hard, Fast Rules for How Things Ought To Be. 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