Of course, I agree with you that this will lead to rebellion among the young, for a while. But the young ususally outgrow rebellion and remember the values they were taught, if people take the time to do the teaching.
Well then, we agree on the one and only point I was making-- until you add the "for a while" and the part about kids
"outgrowing it."
I don't disagree with your optimism, I just didn't include any opinion toward the word-coinage in my post.
And Tim, I don't honestly know what your sticking point is with my use of "euphemism" instead of "synonym." Are you really quizzing me on whether I know that "gay" means "homosexual?"
I can only imagine we have a different take on the word
euphemism. Mine isn't influenced much by the etymology, for one thing. Just because one societal faction (social engineers, not gay people) decide we need a "nicer word" for something-- doesn't mean the original word, or the thing it denotes, is "bad."
The Victorians had euphemisms aplenty, and the one cited so often is instructive here-- people were supposed to stop calling furniture parts "legs" and refer to them as "limbs."
For me, since you press so insistently for an answer, I'd have to say "gay" is a euphemism for any other word meaning homosexual, including "homosexual." It covers words that are slurs, can be taken as slurs, and words that ought to be "clinical" but can sound offensive if pronounced sneeringly.
I remember when
black was promulgated as a euphemism for
Negro, an act of deliberate inversion-- the "polite" term being replaced by one which had theretofore been considered rude. I bought that one and still like it, mostly because it's simple, monosyllabic-- and analogous to
white, whose use goes unabated.
The argument was made at the time (when
Negro was a euphemism for
black), that it was insulting to Negros to imply that blackness even
needed a euphemism. Didn't that imply that being black was a bad thing?
Maybe your seeming objection to my statement that
gay is a euphemism is in the same ballpark as that logic? I still don't understand what you're aiming at-- maybe you could explain yourself in a little greater detail, here or in a PM.
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