Re: [Marxism] Re: "niggardly" and "bitch-slapped"

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

Mark Lause wrote:
>
> I agree completely about disputes over language and that its not
> advisable to use either "niggardly" or "bitch-slapped," because you
> can't count on people generally understanding what you mean.  (This is
> what I keep pointing out about "nation," btw.)
>
> However, I don't hesitate to use a term in correcting its gross misuse
> in the context of a sociology text or on a Marxism List.

Linguistic purists almost always lose. I remember vainly trying to
explain to one of my high-school teachers that "inflammable" really
meant "apt to burst into flames." Correct, but they  eventually had to
start using the invented word "flammable" on trucks because almost
everyone falsely thought "inflammable" meant "not 'flammable.') If
people think "niggardly" comes from "nigger," then in practice the word
will hurt people, so I guess we have to give it up, at least in popular
speech and writing.

Carrol

Three hundred years ago Swift was hot and bothered about the vulgarism
"mob," but he lost and the word  won. A hundred years ago it was "bus"
that the purists thought vulgar.


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